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FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 




Photo] 



Anatole France. 



[Boyer 



Frontispiece. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 



W. F. LONERGAN 

AUTHOR OF THE " NEW PARISIANS," ETC. 



WITH THIRTY-TWO PORTRAITS 



BRENTANO'S 

NEW YORK 
1907 



^-^^4^3 



o^ 



{All rights reserved) 



Contents 



CHAPTER I 

First glimpses of Paris — The days of the Empire — 
The Imperial " Smart Set " — Offenbach and Schneider 
— Jose Dupuis and the ladies — Louis Veuillot — Pere 
Hyacinthe at Notre Dame — The two Dumas — Church 
and State then — General de Failly's chassepots — The 
Empress Eugenie then and now — The Court ladies 
— Princess Metternich — Prosper Merimee at Com- 
piegne — The Dryad in gauze — The Duchesse de 
Persigny and the living pictures — The Due de Per- 
signy's memoirs and the Empress .... 



CHAPTER II 

Republicans and the Empire — Ollivier, Rochefort, Rouher 
— The Empress a matchmaker — The Victor Noir affair 
— In Normandy with the Germans — The Prussian 
deserter — In the Latin Quarter — Recollections of 
Renan — His view of Christianity — Taine on London — 
His descriptions of Somerset House, the Strand, and 
Trafalgar Square — Max O'Rell and Taine — Debates 
and discussions in the Latin Quarter . . . .10 



vi FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

CHAPTER III 

PAGE 

Royalists, Bonapartists, and Republicans— The May dates 
—The Due de Broglie and Marshal MacMahon— The 
Romance of the MacMahons— The doctor and the 
widow— Bismarck and the Republic— Gambetta's 
dinners— Madame de Paivre— The onyx staircase . 27 

CHAPTER IV 

The Grevy family — Daniel Wilson— Madame Grevy and 
the King of Greece— M. Wilson and M. de Blowitz — 
The Daily Telegraph Paris office — Newspaper work in 
Paris — The Morning News and Galignani's Messenger — 
Thackeray on Galignani's staff — His " Ballad of Bouil- 
labaisse" 38 

CHAPTER V 

La haute politique — The Egyptian Question — The Near 
East — Mr. Lavino and Russia — M. de Blowitz saves 
France — The real importance of M, de Blowitz — His 
remarkable position — Bismarck and Ferry — Bits of 
big news — The fall of Ferry 50 

CHAPTER VI 

At the Chamber of Deputies — The Fenians in Paris — James 
Stephens and Eugene Davis — The " j-esources of civili- 
sation" — The "Irish Ambassador" — Trial of Madame 
Clovis Hugues — Tragedy in a newspaper office — Victor 
Hugo's death and funeral — Pasteur and his rabbits — 
My meetings with Pasteur — His views on Gladstone 
and Parnell — My meeting with M. Clemenceau — 
Mrs. Crawford, Mr. Cremer, and M. Clemenceau — 
M. Clemenceau then and now — M. Clemenceau and 
M. Jaures 59 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS vii 

CHAPTER VII 



More about M. Clemenceau — A smasher of Cabinets — The 
numerous ministries of the Republic — Rise of General 
Boulanger — The present German Emperor and 
Boulanger — My meeting with the General — Events 
and episodes of the Boulangist period — Boulanger's 
flight and fall — His Boswell, Charles Chincholle — The 
king of reporters — Fictionist first, journalist after — 
The Opera Comique fire — Pranzini's execution — 
Close to the guillotine 78 



CHAPTER VIII 

President Carnot's election — Paul Deroulede and the 
patriots — Hatred of Ferry — M. Clemenceau's "out- 
sider" — The " Marriage a Failure " question — My talks 
with Zola, Dumas, and others — Emile Zola at home — 
M. Sardou's anger — M. Ludovic Halevy's letter — War 
clouds — Rupture with Rome foreshadowed — The 
Floquet programme of 1888 lOO 



CHAPTER IX 

The Exhibition of 1889 — A Lord Mayor's banquet in Paris 
— M. Tirard, Sir James Whitehead and the City 
magnates from London — Mysterious disappearance 
of a journalist — The so-called "reptiles " of the German 
Press — Bismarck's double — Boulangist tentative de 
regonflement — The Duke of Orleans and the 
Gamelle — Boulanger's suicide — The British Embassy 
in Paris — Lord Lyons and the Republicans — The 
Jubilee garden party 113 



viii FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

CHAPTER X 

PAGE 

More about the British Embassy — Lord Lytton's reception 
— Earl Lytton as a Parisian — His religious views — 
His sudden death — His successors at the Embassy — 
Sir E. Monson at Brest and M. Gosselin at Ushant — 
The Drummond Castle medals — The EngHsh and 
American colonies in Paris — Notable English and 
American Residents — Count Boni de Castellane and 
Miss Anna Gould — The imitation Trianon — The 
divorce - . 126 



CHAPTER XI 

Americans in Paris — Mr. J. G. Bennett — Mr. Joseph Pulitzer 
— Other Americans — Sardou's " Thermidor " — Origin 
of the bloc — Empress Frederick in Paris — Her 
cold reception — Death of Prince Napoleon — The 
blood-stained shirt and M. Constans — Franco-Russian 
foregatherings — A prelate's prosecution — M. Constans 
and M. Laur — The ** '^otirnee des Gifles," or a political 
Boxing-day — Ravachol the dynamiter . . . 144 



CHAPTER XII 

Dynamite outrages — The Panama bubble-— The anti-Semitic 
campaign — M. Drumont and the Jews — Jewish officer 
killed in duel — Baron de Reinach's mysterious death 
— M. Clemenceau and Dr. Herz — The sick man of 
Bournemouth — The Clemenceau- Deroulede duel — 
The "Pot de Vin" ballet— The Panama cheques- 
Foreign Correspondents expelled— Admiral Avellan's 
visit — The question of Siam — Anti-Enghsh feeling — 
The dynamiters Henry and Vaillant .... 158 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS ix 

CHAPTER XIII 

PAGE 

Death of Marshal MacMahon and Charles Gounod — Death 
of Jules Ferry and H, Taine — Max Lebaudy and 
Liane de Pougy — The Delilahs of the Third Republic 
— The assassination of President Carnot — His funeral 
described by Clement Scott — President Casimir-Perier 
— Verdi at the Opera — French and Italians — M. Casimir- 
Perier's resignation — Death of M. Waddington . . 173 



CHAPTER XIV 

Leonide Leblanc and her rivals — Auguste Burdeau's career 
— Madame Alboni and her gendarme — The passing of 
the " reptiles " — The Madagascar Expedition — Roche- 
fert's return from Portland Place — A famous couturier's 
career — Charles Worth, of Lincolnshire — His Royal 
and Imperial patrons — His methods of work and his 
prices — Death of Dumas the Second — A theatrical 
funeral — Max Lebaudy 's sad end — The Vampires — 
The romance of Armand Rosenthal . . . .189 



CHAPTER XV 

M. Meline and the Affaire — Ambroise Thomas and the 
Conservatoire — Cleo de Merode and the kings — M. 
Cernuschi the Bi-metallist — The coming of the Tsar — 
Dr. Dillon on the Imperial visit — The Charity Bazaar 
fire — A visit to Fleet Street — Opening of the Affaire 
— My talk with Maitre Demange, defender of Dreyfus 
— Madame Hadamard's tears — Maitre Demange's pre- 
diction — The " Leakages " and the bordereau, . . 205 



X FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

CHAPTER XVI 

PAGE 

Alphonse Daudet's death — His family and friends — M. 
Leon Daudet on France and England — Emile Zola's 
letter " J' accuse " — His trial — Colonel Henry's suicide 
— The Fashoda alarm — Lord Kitchener in Paris when 
Sirdar — His arrival with Baratier at the Gare de Lyon 
— Death of Mr. Hely Bowes — A notable journalist — 
The mysterious death of President Faure — His 
secretary's statement — Legends of " La Belle Juive " 
and the lady with the violets — M. Faure's person- 
ality and picturesqueness 222 



CHAPTER XVn 

President Loubet — M, Deroulede's attempted coup d'etat 
— M. Loubet at home — M. Waldeck-Rousseau's return 
to politics — His career at the Bar — General the 
Marquis de Galliffet — From carpet knight to hero — 
Home-coming of Dreyfus — Baffling the Press — Fort 
Chabrol and its defender — The French and the Boers 
— Paul Kruger and President Loubet — The Exhibition 
of 1900 — The Tsar and Tsaritsa at Compiegne — 
Repubhcan ladies — Madame Waldeck- Rousseau and 
the cake 237 



CHAPTER XVHI 

M. Emile Combes at work — The Humbert hoax — M. 
Waldeck- Rousseau and the hoax — The " biggest 
fraud of the century" — Maitre Labori and the 
Humberts — M. Jaures and M. Gohier — The expulsions 
of the Orders — Rising in Brittany — Death of Sir 
Campbell Clarke — Death of Emile Zola — His enemies 
and his friends — Zola's children — Some famous 
French journalists — Death of M. de Blowitz — The 
suicide of Sir Hector Macdonald — The coming of 
King Edward — The entente cordiale and its results . 253 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS xi 

CHAPTER XIX 

PAGE 

King Edward in Paris — At the Hotel de Ville — Great 
popular and official reception — The King and Queen 
of Italy in Paris — Voices against the visit — Attacks on 
Victor Emmanuel and the Republicans who receive 
him — M. and Madame Jaures at the Elysee banquet — 
The Socialist citoyenne and her diamonds — The 
Republic and the Church at war — Real and pretended 
anti-clericals — Two famous actors, Delaunay and Got 
— Herman iMerivale and John Hollingshead in Paris 
— J. Clifford Millage, of the Chronicle — Death of 
Princess Mathilde — Her literary and artistic receptions 
— Marinoni and the Petit Journal — Death of 
M. Waldeck- Rousseau at Corbeil — His last cigarette — 
Resignation of his successor, M. Combes — Exultation 
of the Catholics over the defeat of the petit pere — 
Gabriel Syveton's career — The Patrie Frangaise and 
its literary and artistic supporters — Syveton's ruin and 
death — Return of Paul Deroulede .... 269 



CHAPTER XX 

The Church and State conflict — Both sides of the question 
— M. Viviani's speech and Professor Huxley on 
Christian mythology — M. Camille Pelletan and the 
Pope — Hatred of the Vatican in France and England 
— The Harlot of the Seven Hills — War against Rome 
begun in 1882 — What the Catholics complain of — 
Religion and politics 287 



CHAPTER XXI 

The speculations as to a schism — Ultramontanism versus 
Gallicanism — Inside troubles of the Church in France 
— The cases of the Bishops of Laval and Dijon 
— Effects of the Higher Criticism — Abbe Loisy's 



xii FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

PAGE 

work— Ernest Renan, Hyacinthe Loyson, and Alfred 
Loisy — Attacks on Abbe Loisy's teaching — His 
views on the Old Testament— His " L'Evangile et 
I'Eghse" 304 



CHAPTER XXn 

Abbe Loisy on the New Testament— The Chicago god— 
The Jesuits and the new critic— Archbishop Mignot's 
views — Loisy and Renan compared — Their styles — 
Their arguments in Christology— Abbe Loisy's friends 
and foes — His condemnation by Rome . . • 3^5 



CHAPTER XXni 

French literary men at home and abroad — M. Anatole 
France and his critics — M. France and M. Lemaitre — 
Their special knowledge of French — M. France on 
his master Renan — M. Joris Karl Huysmans — His 
views on modern novelists — M. Maurice Barres and 
his books — Some vanished literary celebrities — James 
Darmesteter as I knew him — Darmesteter and Spinoza 
— " L'Esprit Juif " — Ferdinand Brunetiere and M. 
Buloz — Brunetiere's " Discours de Combat" — His 
death 328 



CHAPTER XXIV 

Pierre Loti at Aden — The French dramatists — The old 
playwrights and the new — Rise of M. Antoine — His 
early efforts and failures — His series of new men — 
Henri Becque — The " Comedie Rosse " — The men 
from Antoine's — Lavedan, Donnay, Brieux, Francis de 
Curel, Courteline — M. Capus at home — M. Brieux 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS xiii 

PAGE 

and his '' Avaries " — Courteline's bag of tricks — M. 
Paul Hervieu and the " Dedale " — M. Edmond 
Rostand and M. CoqueHn — The French poets — Hugo, 
Lamartine, Baudelaire, Verlaine — The only comic 
poet 344 



CHAPTER XXV 

Return to politics after literature — President Loubet's 
retirement — His new home in the Rue Dante — His 
successor, M. Armand Fallieres — A Republic of 
lawyers — Close of the Dreyfus case — M. Clemenceau, 
President of the Council, and General Picquart, War 
Minister — General de Galliffet on Picquart's rise — 
General Andre and his revelations — The mysteries of 
modern Paris — Farewell to France .... 363 



List of Illustrations 



ANATOLE FRANCE . » . . Frontispiece 

EMPRESS EUGENIE . . . . To face page 5 

MARSHAL MACMAHON . . . .,,,,31' 

JULES GREVY . . . . n )i 39 "^ 

M. DE BLOWITZ . . . . „ „ 56 

JULES FERRY . , . . ,j n 5^ 

LOUIS PASTEUR . . . . . „ „ ^7 

JEAN JAURES . . . . m n 74 

DUC DE BROGLIE . . . . „ „ 79 

ARMAND FALLIERES . . . „ „ 80 

GENERAL BOULANGER . . . . „ „ 87 

GEORGES CLEMENCEAU ... M v lOI 

ALEXANDRE DUMAS . . . • ij v I04 

VICTORIEN SARDOU ... M n ^^^ 

DUC d'orleans , . . . „ „ 120 ' 

EDOUARD DRUMONT ... )5 » ^59 ^ 



xvi FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

JEAN CASiMiR-PERiER . . . To face page 185 

HENRI ROCHEFORT . . . . „ „ I97 

EMILE COMBES .... rj n 209 

ALFRED DREYFUS . . . . „ „ 2l8 

M. WALDECK-ROUSSEAU ... » d 24O 

CAMILLE PELLETAN . . . . „ „ 257 ' 

PRINCESSE MATHILDE ... m i» ^7^ 

JULES LEMAITRE . . . . h 1) 283 

PAUL DEROULEDE . . . . „ „ 285 

FERDINAND BRUNETIERE . . . „ „ 297 

ABBE LOISY .... jj 17 310 

PIERRE LOTI . . . . • jj » 344 

ALFRED CAPUS . . . • „ „ 349 

EDMOND ROSTAND .... » >, 355 

MAITRE DEMANGE . . . . „ „ 367 

GENERAL PICQUART . . . „ „ 369 



Forty Years of Paris 



CHAPTER I 

First glimpses of Paris — The days of the Empire — The 
Imperial "Smart Set" — Offenbach and Schneider — Jose 
Dupuis and the ladies — The other side — Louis Veuillot — 
Pere Hyacinthe at Notre Dame — The two Dumas — 
Church and State then — General De Failly's chasse- 
pots — The Empress Eugenie then and now — The Court 
ladies — Princess Metternich — Prosper Merimee at Com- 
piegne — The Dryad in gauze — The Duchesse de Per- 
signy and the living pictures — The Due de Persigny 
and the Empress. 

ACCORDING to Benvenuto Cellini, who has 
been called "the Supreme Scoundrel of the 
Renaissance," every man, past forty years of age, 
who has done anything should write a record of 
his life. In my opinion, to write reminiscences, or 
to narrate one's experiences of life, one must be 
a great egotist, or a remarkable personage. I hope 
that I am not an egotist, and can assuredly lay no 
claim to being a person of importance in what William 
Morris terms " the world's great game." I am not 
conscious of any notable achievements such as were 

2 1 



2 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

accomplished by those famous in history and literature 
as recorders of reminiscences. What I have to do, 
however, is not to give a record of my whole life, a 
vita travagliata, like that of the renowned Renais- 
sance artist and adventurer, to whom in this respect 
I may compare myself, but of my life in that most 
interesting of European cities which, according to an 
old and worn French saying, is the Paradise of women, 
the Purgatory of men, and the Hell of horses. My life 
in Paris comprised a period of twenty-five years' actual 
residence, but I have had experience of the place, on 
and off, for nearly forty years. During my residence 
and my previous visits I had an opportunity of keep- 
ing my finger on the pulse of the French capital, as it 
were. Even as a youth I had some opportunities of 
studying the place and its people. My first glimpse 
of the capital of France was obtained in a curious way. 
I was sent to study philosophy and theology in France 
with a view to entering a calling which was too good 
for me. At that time the Second Empire was still in 
existence, and I had glimpses of Imperial Paris. It 
is almost needless to say that it was a much livelier 
place then than it is to-day. 

In Imperial Paris, before the great collapse, men 
and women who had any money seemed, as is well 
known, to live for luxury. The " Smart Set" of the 
day were, of course, at the Tuileries, and they led 
the way in the pursuit of pleasure. There is no need 
to dwell on that, for the grandeur and follies of the 
Offenbach and Schneider era have been only too 
frequently described. I must offer an apology here 
to that estimable man, M. Robert Mitchell, a true 
Bonapartist, who has objected before now to my 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 3 

allusions in print to his father-in-law, the famous 
composer of the " Grand Duchess." Whatever 
M. Mitchell may say, it must be stated, with all 
due respect to the memory of his father-in-law, 
that the years preceding the fall of the Second 
Empire were full of the influence of that composer 
of the merriest and most tuneful " musical comedies ' 
ever staged. Meilhac and Halevy, those entertaining 
distorters of mythology and caricaturists of small 
German Courts, had their part in the fun and frivolity 
of that period ; but it was Jacques Offenbach who 
was predominant, and after him ranked Hortense 
Schneider. 

The latter is still living in a villa at Auteuil — a 
wrinkled relic of the past. Hortense Schneider was 
born in Bordeaux in the year 1835. She was married 
formerly to a M. de Buone. She was not only famous 
in Paris but also at Baden-Baden, where the dandies 
of the Empire gambled before the War. Jose Dupuis, 
who acted with Schneider in Offenbach's operettas, 
lives also in retirement outside Paris. He used to be 
as great a favourite with the women as Schneider was 
with the men. 

In those days I had little or no opportunity of 
listening to Offenbach or of hearing the song of 
the sabre. My path was in a far different direction. 
I was then chiefly concerned with the great French 
ecclesiastical writers, and was reading diligently 
Bossuet, Massillon, Lacordaire, and also Monta- 
lembert. Occasionally I heard and read Louis 
' Veuillot, the publican's son, who attacked the vices 
of the period with a caustic pen, and who, as the 
journalistic champion of the Catholic Church, fre- 



4: FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

quently made his anti-clerical opponents wince under 
the whip of his scathing satire. I heard, too, a good 
deal then of Pere Hyacinthe, now known as M. Loy- 
son, of whom I have more to say later on. He had, 
as a Carmelite friar of great eloquence, been capti- 
vating Parisians from the pulpit of Notre Dame, and 
his falling away was naturally as much discussed in 
the ecclesiastical circles in which I found myself as 
was that of Ernest Renan years before. 

Occasionally I had in my ears vague rumours of 
Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, and 
the statesmen and generals of the Second Empire. 
Dumas naturally appealed to my schoolboy instincts 
through his romances, and during my early Bohemian 
wanderings in Paris, after I had cut adrift from 
patrons and friends, I had a wild notion that the 
great fictionist who wrote " Monte Cristo " and the 
" Three Musketeers " would give me employment on 
his staff, for I knew, nebulously, that he had assistants 
who, as I learned in later times, were called "ghosts." 
I never met the great French story-spinner, but I was 
destined, long after his death, to meet his son in 
peculiar circumstances, to be recorded hereafter. 

My notions of political matters were crude in those 
days. I knew nothing about the trouble in store for 
France after Sadowa, and the roseate declarations of 
M. Rouher in the Legislative Assembly when, in 
answer to Thiers, who said " Le gouvernment n'a 
plus dallies," he added, " Ni d'ennemis," were as 
unknown to me as the developments of the Luxem- 
bourg question and the Mexican campaign. What I 
was interested in, however, was the great Italian, or 
rather the Vatican, question, which is uppermost to-day 




The Empress EuoiNiE. 
After Winterhalter. 



To face p. 5. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 5 

as well as then. The Garibaldians had marched into 
the States of the Church, and yielding to the solici- 
tations of the Empress, who was backed by M. 
Rouher, Napoleon the Third sent French troops 
into Italy under General de Failly, author of the 
famous phrase referring to the defeat of the Gari- 
baldians at Mentana, " Les chassepots ont fait mer- 
veille." It was after this M. Rouher declared, on the 
opening of the legislative session of 1867-68, that the 
Pope had need of Rome for his independence, and 
that the French Government would never allow it to 
be taken from him. "Jamais! Jamais!" cried the 
majority who applauded the Minister. Times have 
changed since then, and to-day we see a French 
Government vehemently opposed to the Pope, and 
utterly unmindful of his influence and his position. 

This Roman or Vatican policy of the Imperial 
Cabinet was, as is above said, due to the interference 
of the Empress, always a most pious Catholic. Even 
her bitterest enemies have admitted that in her 
seemingly most frivolous moments, when the Germans 
called her a "■ Zierpuppe,'' or ornamental doll married 
to a melancholy dreamer, and when, as a French 
historian wrote, she " passed from her fashion studio 
in the Tuileries to the Council of Ministers, there 
to interfere in State Matters of which she understood 
nothing," she always remained true to her religion. 

I saw the Empress once in the height of her 
grandeur and glory, and I have seen her in these 
later days, a sad and pensive phantom taking furtive 
walks in the gardens of the Tuileries, during one of 
her periodical sojourns at the Hotel Continental in 
the Rue de Rivoli, where she is near the scenes of 



6 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

her former splendour. The contrast is striking — 
none more so. While observing her movements, 
marred by the debility of age, I could not help going 
back in memory to days when I saw her starting for 
Biarritz surrounded by ladies of honour, courtiers, 
and friends, such as Princess Metternich, wife of the 
Austrian Ambassador, Prince Richard Metternich, 
who died in March, 1895 '> Vicomtesse Aguado, whose 
pretty hands Winterhalter drew from in his official 
portraits of the Empress ; the Duchess de Persigny, 
and many more. Who those ladies were, friends 
and favourites of the Empress, I could not have 
known then, but I subsequently learned a good deal 
about them from the book of that interesting 
chronicler of memories of the Tuileries, Madame 
Carette. You have to go to Madame Carette, 
undoubtedly, for inner lights on the Court of the 
Tuileries. She gossips as only ladies can, and she 
must have kept a most careful diary while she was 
reader and maid of honour to the Empress. I am 
not quite sure if she relates everything that she heard 
and saw, but she goes very near it, leaving the worst 
to the scandal-mongers who have published more 
or less fanciful reports of the secret vices of the Court 
of the Tuileries. Such books abound in Paris, but 
I have avoided them, and having always had a strong 
liking for the Bonapartes, for various reasons, one of 
which is that I have invariably found their adherents 
to be most courteous and kindly persons, and far 
more interesting than many of the Republicans who 
succeeded to their places and their power, I have 
never been moved by the scandal-mongers, nor even 
by M^rim^e, who was the friend of the Empress, or 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 7 

Maxime du Camp, both of whom have left on record 
some strange things about the Second Empire. It 
was Prosper M^rimee, for instance, who wrote in his 
" Lettres a une inconnue " that at a ball given at 
Compiegne there was a young lady " en nymphe 
Dryade avec une robe qui aurait laissee toute la 
gorge h decouvert si on n'y eut remedi^ par un 
maillot, ce qui semblait presque aussi vif que le 
ddcolletage de la maman dont on penetrait tout 
I'estomac d'un coup d'ceil." And Maxime du Camp, 
in his " Paris, ses organes et sa vie," wrote that in the 
period before the storm of 1870 one hundred and 
twenty thousand women composed the "arm^e de 
depravation, de debauche et de ruine," these persons 
ranging from the wretched grisette to the " grande 
dame qui, avant de se rendre, exige et re9oit un 
million en pieces d'or nouvellement frappte." These 
grand ladies did not want, you see, cheques or notes, 
but gold fresh from the Mint. 

Now, it is true that there was a bad example given 
by the Court in those days, but I believe that the 
scandals have been much exaggerated. A German 
whom I know, and who has lived a good deal in 
Paris, once declared that many of the stories told of 
the Court ladies were apocryphal. He particularly 
defended Princess Metternich, who, he said, always 
remained a lady, a high-born aristocrat, despite the 
eccentricity which made her talk Paris slang and 
imitate the music-hall singer Theresa. It was even 
doubtful if she did this, but her eccentricity, according 
to the German writer, was pardonable, as she had an 
admixture of insanity in her composition. So at least 
appears from the following story of a living picture 



8 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

display. The Empress once desired that her ladies 
should sit around in one of the garden nooks at 
Compiegne arranged in a Watteau group of living 
pictures. The Duchesse de Persigny, a great beauty 
of the blonde division, objected to powder her fair 
hair, whereupon Princess Metternich complained to 
the Empress. The latter said, " Oh, let her have 
her own way, the poor thing. Her mother is in a 
madhouse." "Well," said Princess Metternich, whose 
name before marriage was Pauline Von Sandor, 
** I have the same claim to your Majesty's con- 
sideration, as my father is also in a madhouse." 
The matter was compromised by the injunction of 
the Empress that the Duchesse de Persigny was 
to take part in another and a non-Watteau com- 
bination of living pictures. The husband of the 
fair-haired Duchess has left a most valuable volume 
of reminiscences. He died at Nice in 1872, but 
his memoirs, prepared for publication by his friend 
and secretary, Comte d'Espagny, did not appear until 
1896. Persigny was one of the most interesting 
figures of the Second Empire. He was born in 
1800, was a military student at the Saumur Cavalry 
School, whence he passed into a Hussar regiment, 
and on leaving the army he went to Germany. 
While at Ludwigsburg, near Stuttgart, where he 
had an appointment of an amorous character with 
an unknown fair one, Persigny saw Louis Napoleon 
for the first time. The Prince was out driving, and 
his coachman was shouting " Vive Napoleon ! " 
Persigny joined the Prince's set and became devo- 
tedly attached to him. The Republicans go so far 
as to make Persigny the most prominent of those 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 9 

who helped to bring about the coup cTStat of 
the 2nd of December, 1851. They call him the 
policeman, or gendarme, of the Second Empire, 
as the Due de Morny was its diplomatist, and they 
bracket him with General Saint Arnaud and 
M. de Maupas. In his memoirs Persigny glides 
over the coup cT^tat. A little before my first visit 
to Paris, Persigny was in bad odour at the Tuileries. 
He saw the clouds gathering, opposed Rouher and 
the new advisers of the Emperor, and objected to the 
interference of the Empress in matters of State. He 
wrote on this delicate subject to Napoleon the Third ; 
the letter fell into the hands of the Empress, who at 
once informed Persigny that she would not attend 
Cabinet Councils any more. The Duke was never 
pardoned for his frankness. 



CHAPTER II 

Republicans and the Empire — Ollivier, Rochefort, Rouher — The 
Empress a matchmaker — The Victor Noir affair — In 
Normandy with the Germans — The Prussian deserter — 
In the Latin Quarter — Recollections of Renan — His view 
of Christianity — Taine on London — His descriptions of 
Somerset House, the Strand, and Trafalgar Square — Max 
O'Rell and Taine — Debates and discussions in the Latin 
Quarter. 

TOWARDS the year 1869 some of the Repub- 
Hcans, whom I was afterwards to see and hear 
in the height of their popularity and success, began 
to make their influence felt. Emile Ollivier, the man 
who went to war with a " light heart," had been 
directed by the Emperor to form a Cabinet and to 
succeed M. Rouher. The events of the time brought 
to the front the founders of the Third Republic, such 
as Ldon Gambetta, Jules Grevy, Jules Ferry, and, it 
may well be added, Henri Rochefort. It is not widely 
known that M. Ollivier himself was at that period 
designated a renegade Republican. His father, 
Demosthenes Ollivier, had been a man of the moun- 
tain, and what is termed "a victim of the 2nd of 
December" — that is to say, of the coup d'etat of 
December, 1851. He himself had been associated 

with Ledru Rollin, who long lived in exile in St. 

10 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 11 

John's Wood. In 1857 M. Ollivier was put forward 
on the Republican — or rather the Democratic — ticket, 
and he wrote that the Republican party supported 
him by reason of the devotedness of his father to the 
cause, and out of respect to the memory of his brother, 
Aristides Ollivier, who was killed in a political duel. 
Towards the end of 1869 M. Ollivier publicly declared 
that all good men should rally around the Dynasty. 
He cut himself adrift from his old friends of the Left 
Centre, and set to work to form the " Empire Liberal." 
This is the title of the voluminous work on which M. 
Ollivier was long engaged in his retirement at Saint 
Tropez, in the South of France, where he resides 
during the winter months. The venerable academi- 
cian varies this historical work by writing occasional 
leading articles, and by defending the Empress 
Eugenie from the recurring attacks of Republicans who 
insist that the war of 1870-71 was "her war." Quite 
recently — in July, 1906 — there was some flutter at the 
French Academy when M. Thureau-Dangin wanted 
to award the Gobert prize to M. de la Gorsse for 
his history of the Second Empire. The flutter was 
caused by M. Ollivier, who contested M. de la Gorsse's 
account of the events leading up to the war of 1870, 
and stated that Prussia alone was responsible for that 
Titanic conflict. The upshot was that M. de la 
Gorsse did not obtain the Gobert prize, and that 
M. Ollivier received a raking fire from the Republi- 
can press. One of the Republican writers began by 
stating that the Imperial policy in the Hohenzollern 
affair admirably served the politique de derriere la tete 
of Bismarck. The French Cabinet was exacting in 
its demands, continued this writer, and that was 



12 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

simply and solely because the Empress, who had 
planned a marriage between the Murats and the 
Hohenzollerns, insisted absolutely that Prince 
Frederick of Hohenzollern, brother of Prince Leo- 
pold, should after his marriage with Princess Anna 
Murat come to live in Paris, and form part of the 
Court of the Tuileries. The Prince's father ob- 
jected, saying that his son's place was at the Court 
of Prussia. We are told that the Empress then did 
her utmost to thwart the Prussians and the Hohen- 
zollerns, and later on made her husband demand 
from King William the promise that, after the refusal 
of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern to take the throne 
of Spain, no member of the Royal Family should be 
put forward as a candidate for the same throne. ^ 

This brief excursion into the domain of history is 
necessary for the purpose of leading up to the Repub- 
licans who belong to the period with which the author 
is most familiar. Emile Ollivier, as we have seen, 
was charged to form the Cabinet of the " Empire 
Liberal," and he did so in January, 1870. He was 
President as well as Minister of Justice and of Public 
Worship, M. de Valdrome being at the Interior, 
M. Napoleon Daru at the Foreign Office, M. Buffet 
at the Treasury, General Leboeuf head of the War 
Office, and Admiral Rigault de Genouilly, Marine or 
Admiralty. The other Ministers were nonentities 
from the political and popular point of view. 

^ M. Ollivier also vigorously defends the Empire in his 
recent work or magnum opus. He tries to make Napoleon 
the Third irresponsible for the crushing of France, but careful 
readers of history will not forget that the Emperor was badly 
advised in the matter of the Danish Duchies in 1864, and did 
not see the danger ahead after Sadowa in 1866. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 13 

M. Olllvier had hardly formed his Cabinet when 
the uproar caused by the shooting of Victor Noir 
arose, and brought to the front the Republicans who 
were the bitterest enemies of the Empire, with Henri 
Rochefort at their head. Rochefort was then, as I 
have seen him so often in later years, the active and 
daring journalist ever tossing like a stormy petrel on 
the waters of agitation. Whenever there is anything 
lively taking place in Paris under the Third Republic, 
Rochefort is as prominent in it as he was at the time 
when he branded Pierre Napoleon Bonaparte as a 
bandit, and asserted that the Prince in question was 
one of the red-handed ruffians of the Empire who, not 
content with blowing Republicans to pieces in the 
streets, lured them into traps and murdered them. The 
Prince who shot Victor Noir had previously referred 
to Rochefort as the "" porte-drapeau de la crapuW — 
" the banner-bearer of blackguardism." Rochefort, 
as is well known, vehemently attacked the Empire in 
the Lanterne of that day. It is interesting to note 
that M. de Villemessant, the provincial draper who 
founded the successful Figaro^ and was a friend of 
the Imperial Government and of the Conservatives, 
actually financed the Lanterne on its foundation. The 
fact is guaranteed by M. Taxile Delord, who published 
a history of the Second Empire in 1874. It was as if 
M. Arthur Meyer, the chief champion of the Church 
and the Conservatives of the present day, backed on 
the sly the modern Lanterne or the Petite Rdpublique, 
while conducting the Gaulois to suit the tastes and 
the inclinations of the aristocratic residents of the 
Faubourg Saint Germain. This double-dealing has 
not been uncommon in French journalism, and not 



U FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

a few experts in it who thrive in the present day 
could be mentioned. 

From the agitation over the Victor Noir affair to 
the outbreak of the war is not a far cry. That 
momentous time from July, 1870, to September 4th in 
the same year has been too much and too ably treated 
to need any repetition here. Historians both brilliant 
and industrious, historiographers picturesque and 
practical have in France, England, and Germany 
narrated and commented upon the war, the fall of 
the Empire, the flight of the Empress, the imprison- 
ment of Napoleon the Third, his death in England, 
until there is nothing left to be said on these subjects. 

Away from Paris during the heavy fighting of 1870 
I saw on my return to France in 1871 the Prussians 
occupying Normandy. While staying at Dieppe I met 
a young Prussian who asked me to help him to get to 
England. He had deserted from the German troops 
occupying Rouen and its vicinity, the same district in 
which Guy de Maupassant placed the scenes of his 
remarkable story adapted for the stage as " Made- 
moiselle Fifine." In those days I passed through 
Normandy like many a British tourist, unmindful of 
the memories of the place which, from the literary side 
alone, and independently of its historic associations, 
is full of interest, for it is the country of the two 
Corneilles, as well as of the more intensely modern 
Gustave Flaubert, and the author who was his faithful 
pupil — the unlucky Guy de Maupassant. I once saw 
Maupassant at Cannes, where he was staying with his 
mother, before the disaster which necessitated his 
removal to the private asylum, where his principal 
recreation was chasing butterflies, until he died. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 15 

The young Prussian to whom I have referred had 
managed somehow to secure a baggy suit of clothes at 
Rouen, and came to Dieppe thinking that he would 
be able to cross unnoticed to England. His masters 
were too previous for him. They had telegraphed a 
full description of the man to the ports, and as he wore 
spectacles, like many of the German soldiers, especially 
those of the Landwehr, he was soon pulled up at 
Dieppe by the Prussian detectives, who were aided, 
willingly or unwillingly, by the French police and 
**douaniers." 

What became of the poor Prussian was a mystery 
to me then. We drank cider together, and devoured 
fat bacon and bread, and then smoked for some hours 
in a Dieppe tavern, he talking of his prospects of 
finding employment in England and I trying to 
impress upon him the danger that he was incurring in 
leaving Rouen. The man was arrested as he left the 
tavern, and I was for years under the painful im- 
pression that he was shot for desertion before the 
enemy, although the war was then over. To my 
surprise, about 1885, or thereabouts, I met my old 
Prussian friend in a Paris cafe. He recognised me 
and came up to me saying, " Don't you remember 
Dieppe and the fat bacon and cider ? " The question 
staggered me at first, but I soon remembered. He 
told me that he was taken before a French sub-prefect 
after his arrest by the German military detectives, and 
was sent back to his corps. His **Oberst,"he said, gave 
him a severe lecturing, told him that he deserved to 
be not shot, but drowned like a diseased dog, and 
finally condemned him to a short imprisonment. 
When peace was proclaimed my former fellow- 



16 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

adventurer at Dieppe obtained lucrative employment 
in Berlin. 

Leaving Normandy for Paris soon after my meeting 
with the Prussian deserter, I settled in the Latin 
Quarter — a place which has always been most interest- 
ing to me even in these later days when antique land- 
marks have disappeared, and when the venerable 
Sorbonne of the past is represented by a modern 
edifice which resembles a German railway station. 

My old abode in the Latin Quarter was in a street 
near the College of Saint Sulpice, a barrack-looking 
building but nevertheless memorable to me as a seat 
of ecclesiastical tradition and learning. The ordinary 
tourist looks at Saint Sulpice with apathy. The un- 
learned Protestant regards it as a home of benighted 
bigotry and narrow-minded intolerance. The modern 
French atheist, utterly oblivious or ignorant of history, 
would have it destroyed as a stronghold of powerful 
priestcraft and clerical domination. 

To me it was associated with its founder, M. Olier, 
with the traditions of the old regime, and with Renan 
whose writings at one time had a strong influence over 
me, and whose magical style I still enjoy, although I 
have learned to take a more critical view of the manner 
in which he handles history, theology, and philosophy. 

This remarkable man's "Souvenirs de Jeunesse " 
fascinated me, for they were like my own. He was a 
Breton, I am a Celt. He was placed under ecclesi- 
astical care at an early age, and so was L He went 
away from Saint Sulpice, and I also left my college to 
face the world and to study in the great university of 
life. 

Accordingly, when in the Latin Quarter I lived near 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 17 

the old seminary of the Sulpicians, which is not the 
original one of M. Olier's time. I never pass it now 
without thinking of the founder, his successors and 
their famous renegade pupil who wrote the" Vie de 
Jesus." In my keen recollection is always Renan's 
early experience. He went there from the smaller 
Seminary at Issy. Previously he had been at the 
little Seminary of St. Nicolas du Chardonnet under 
Abbe Dupanloup, afterwards Bishop of Orleans, 
where he was taught chiefly rhetoric, "as if I were to 
be a poet, an orator, or an author." The teacher did 
not trouble in the least about German criticisms of 
the texts, &c., and regarded the Bible "as good for 
quotations in ornate sermons." 

Renan's renunciation always recurs to me as I pass 
the great building, and I revert often in memory to 
his progress from the ascetic atmosphere of faith to 
that of gilded doubt and disbelief. I frequently think 
of his introduction through his sister to that German 
criticism which blurred his original views, of his 
struggles for five years, after which he became like 
the "gamin de Paris who brushes aside beliefs which 
the reason of a Pascal cannot escape from," and of that 
serious pronouncement, " in reality, few people have a 
right to disbelieve Christianity." 

I learned a good deal in the Latin Quarter. I 
obtained employment at a library, gave occasional 
lessons, like many greater men, and had time to 
attend free lectures at the old Sorbonne and the 
College of France. My principal instructors, however, 
were the students who lodged with me in a little hotel. 
These youths, some of whom had fought at Sedan, at 
Le Mans, at Bougival, and elsewhere, were literary 

3 



18 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

to their finger-tips. Whether studying law, medicine, 
or letters, they were all crammed with literature. 
They argued every evening on literary subjects, and 
some recited long passages from Corneille, Lamartine, 
and Alfred de Musset, the latter being an especial 
favourite. We had discussions on " Volther Scott," 
who showed the way to the French romantic writers, 
on Dickens and on Thackeray, as well as on Octave 
Feuillet, then a favourite, but classed long since in the 
namby-pamby school, on the more serious writers such 
as Taine, and on Pascal. A prime favourite, too, was 
Prosper Merimee, of whom Walter Pater said "he 
could detect almost everywhere the hollow ring of the 
fundamental nothingness of things," and whose 
" Colomba," according to the same distinguished 
authority, "showed intellectual depth of motive, firmly 
conceived structure, faultlessness of execution, vindi- 
cating the function of the novel as no tawdry light 
literature, but in very deed a fine art." 

Other writers we discussed were Hugo, Michelet, 
J. J. Weiss, a long obsolete essayist and critic, and, 
notably, Taine. Michelet was strongly objected to 
by Royalist students and by the more serious readers, 
who preferred, or pretended to prefer, Henri Martin, 
although criticism has shaken the basis of some of his 
work, notably that dealing with Gaul before Csesar, 
and the Merovingian and Carlovingian epochs. 
Others referred grandly in discussions to the "pro- 
found philosophy" of Guizot, the " diplomatic elegance" 
of Mignet, the " military verve " of Thiers, the " epic 
imagination " of Thierry ; but all the Romanticists to a 
man voted for Michelet, and I was among the number. 

Taine was most frequently to the front in those 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 19 

Latin Quarter days, and I must say I heard less there 
about minor authors such as Henri Murger and his 
Bohemians, than when I removed to the other side 
of the Seine, where I found men in cafes whose 
knowledge of Hterature was confined to the " Vie de 
Boheme," and the fiction of funny Paul de Kock, the 
Frenchman of Dutch origin, whose work was the 
*' vin d! Argenteuil de la litUrature,'' as somebody 
wrote, thus making his position that of a small beer 
man before such big brewers of letters as Balzac. 

Some years before the time about which I am 
writing Taine had published his " Notes on England." 
These were translated by W. F. Rae, and published 
in London in 1872, the author being described as 
H. Taine, D.C.L. Oxon. In France this sounded 
strange, and just as at the present day Frenchmen, 
and also Englishmen who have long lived in France, 
smile when M. Camille Saint Saens, the composer, is 
carefully referred to as ** Doctor," so we in the Latin 
Quarter of old were humorous over Taine's honorary 
Oxford degree. In France he was simply M. Taine. 
The great writer's famous method of investigating 
the social condition, environment, antecedents of the 
individual, so as to arrive at his basic quality, the 
'' faculU maitresse," and thus to formulate a definite 
critical judgment of his work, has long been depreciated 
in England and America. Individuality is too subtle 
and complicated for Taine's analysis, able and 
apparently effective as it seemed to be. The man, 
in any case, remains one of the giants of French 
literature, and his imitators have not eclipsed him. 

In my later years I have compared Taine's 
" Notes" with *' John Bull and His Island " by Max 



20 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

O'Rell, and I do not hesitate to declare that M. Paul 
Blouet must have diligently read the impressions of 
England written by his greater fellow countryman. I 
cannot in this connection resist quoting a few extracts 
from the " Notes," just to enable the reader to judge 
for himself how far Taine's criticisms of English life 
and character held good when M. Blouet wrote, and 
hold good still. Referring to the ideal of happiness 
in England, he says that "it is to be home at six in 
the evening, with a pleasing attached wife, having 
four or five children on their knees, and respectful 
domestics." Again, " Sunday in London in the rain : 
the shops are shut, the streets almost deserted; the 
aspect is that of an immense and a well-ordered 
cemetery. It is appalling. After an hour's walk in 
the Strand especially one has the spleen, one 
meditates suicide." And the monuments! "Somer- 
set House is a frightful thing. Nelson stuck on his 
column, with a coil of rope in the form of a pigtail, is 
like a rat impaled on the top of a pole. A swamp 
like this is a place of exile for the arts of antiquity. 
When the Romans came here they must have thought 
themselves in Homer's Hell, in the land of the 
Cimmerians." That was Taine's comment on a wet 
Sunday among London monuments. 

Adverting to English beggars, Taine says that a 
poor person is not wretched in the South of Europe, 
but in England poverty is hideous, horrible. "Nothing 
can be more terrible than the coat, the lodging, the 
shirt, the form of an English beggar. Possess ^20,000 
in the Funds here, or else cut your throat; such is the 
idea which constantly haunts me, and the omnibus 
advertisements suggest it still more in informing one 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 21 

that 'Mappin's celebrated razors cost only one 
shilling.' " I 

And this of journalists : "According to what my 
friends tell me, the position of journalists is lower 
than with us. The able journalists who write masterly 
leading articles three or four times monthly do not 
sign their work and are unknown to the public. 
Properly speaking, they are literary hacks. Their 
article is read at breakfast as one swallows the bread 
and butter which is eaten with tea. One no more 
asks who wrote the article than one asks who made 
the butter." 

Of the '' esprit Anglais'' \i& wrote that "the interior 
of an English head may not inaptly be likened to one 
of Murray's hand-books, which contains many facts 
and few ideas." The analogy between these sly 
touches of Taine and those of the now vanished Max 
O'Rell, alias Blouet, has always appeared to me in a 
most forcible light. One might imagine, in fact, that 
it was M. Blouet who wrote the " Notes." It is the 
same light and airy French touch — the touch rather 
of the clever, superficial journalist than of the 
philosophic man of letters. But M. Blouet could 
not have written " Les Origines de la France 
Contemporaine," nor the study of Jacobinism which 
it includes. 

As in the case of Renan, so I and many of my 
friends in the Latin Quarter loved to roam near places 

* A man may have impressions such as Taine had when he 
was in the capital of England, in Paris, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, 
and Vienna, but they will not be so deep and enduring as those 
brought home to him by the soHd opulence displayed in the 
West End of London. 



22 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

associated with Taine. I once lived for a few weeks 
in the house in the Rue Madame where Taine resided 
in his dreary days. By a strange coincidence years 
after, in 1883, I found myself in the same street in 
peculiar circumstances. I went there to witness the 
signing of the will of Lord Falkland, an uncle of the 
present holder of the title. Lord Falkland lived for 
a few months every year in a fine first-floor flat at 
No. I, Rue Madame. The street partly belongs to 
the Faubourg Saint Germain Quarter. At that time 
Lord Falkland, whom I knew in a general way, was 
ailing, and I went with his Paris lawyer, Mr. R. O. 
Maugham, and Mr. Willoughby, British Vice Consul, 
to witness the nobleman's will. Lord Falkland, Mr. 
Maugham and Mr. Willoughby died not long after the 
first mentioned had made his will in his bedroom in 
the Rue Madame. The street is thus familiar for 
many reasons to me. 

In 1853 Hippolyte, or, as he was also known, 
Henri Taine lived in this Rue Madame. He received 
four francs an hour for his lessons and was in daily 
fear of being reduced to a lower salary by his employer, 
one Jauffret. He was also persecuted by his official 
superiors of the University, and was liable to a fine, 
as a normal school man, for teaching in a private 
establishment. Taine was succeeded at Jauffret's 
college by Edmond About, a man for whom I never 
had any enthusiasm. He was one of the Normalians 
of the time of Taine, Prevost Paradol, Francisque 
Sarcey, and Cardinal Perraud. I read some of 
About s novels, his ''Roman Question" also, and 
his leading articles in the newspapers, for he was 
always a journalist, but he never gave me the 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 23 

intellectual satisfaction which I obtained from reading 
Rousseau, Renan, Taine, Prevost Paradol, Merimee, 
Ozanam, Joubert, and Amiel. 

When About succeeded Taine at Jauffret's in 1853 
he had just returned from the French School at 
Athens, and was full of fun and frolic. " About goes 
into Society for us," wrote Taine to his friend 
Edouard de Suckau in January, 1854. " His brother- 
in-law tells me that he often goes to three houses in 
an evening. What a butterfly!" Taine himself 
disliked Society in his earlier years, and he was 
reproached once rather brutally by Sainte-Beuve, who 
told him that he knew only books and not men. 
About soon left Jauffret's school and made a most 
determined plunge into the vortex of letters. Fortu- 
nately for himself he succeeded soon, and became 
a prosperous author and journalist. 

Literary men, as I have said, chiefly occupied the 
attention of my old Latin Quarter friends and myself. 
We were vaguely interested in art, music, and the 
drama. We knew that Sardou, Dumas fils, Emile 
Augier, Meilhac, and Halevy existed, but we did 
not trouble overmuch about their plays. Sardou 
at the time had created an uproar by his " Rabagas," 
supposed to be aimed at Leon Gambetta and the 
Republicans. That fascinated us in the Latin 
Quarter, but we contented ourselves with reading 
the bits of the play which were published. How we 
enjoyed the pungent, facile satire, the description of 
the Flying Toad Inn at Monaco where Rabagas 
unloosed the floodgates of his eloquence before 
'* I'avocat sans cause et le m^decin sans client, I'auteur 
siffl6, le commis chass^e, un banqueroutier, deux 



24 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

escrocs, sept imbeciles et huit ivrognes, " and the 
description of the Russian adventurer, General 
Pdtrowlski, who had " eight thousand decorations and 
no linen ! " 

Another " drawer of the long bow " in drama 
whom we appreciated a little in those far-off days was 
Eugene Labiche, but it was chiefly for his " Chapeau 
de Faille de Italie," that now threadbare story of the 
wedding guests who passed the night in the lock-up 
with bride and bridegroom. 

In music our tastes were equally simple. We 
were quite satisfied with Auber, Harold, Boieldieu, 
Offenbach. We knew not Wagner then, although 
an attempt had been made before the fall of the 
Empire, by Princess Metternich, to get the Parisians 
to accept him. They did not, and everybody knows 
the result. Wagner's fierce diatribes against the 
French at the time of their defeat made them exclude 
his operas from Paris until a few years since. The 
first attempt to produce " Lohengrin " at the Op6ra 
in the early eighties was opposed by stink-pots, which 
were flung about the house. Since then Wagner 
has been enthroned in Paris, and thousands of amiable 
fanatics in that city are ready to assassinate you if 
you prefer any other composer. I have learned to 
appreciate and to enjoy Wagner, as well as any 
English, French, or German fanatic, but I do not 
allow him to take all their glory away from Mozart, 
Beethoven, Carl Maria Von Weber, Rossini, and the 
French composers whom I have already mentioned. 
I as well as my former friends of the Latin Quarter 
enjoyed going to the old Opera Comique to hear the 
''Domino Noir," the " Cheval de Bronze," "La 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 25 

Muette de Portici," known in England as " Massani- 
ello," and we also saw the "Grande Duchesse," 
" Genevieve de Brabant," and " Orphee aux Enfers " 
at the Varieties. At that time we had to take seats 
among the gods, and often to stand amid the deities, 
owing to the crowded state of the house and the 
damaged condition of our finances, but we enjoyed 
the play as well as the youth of twenty is supposed 
by B^ranger the ballad-maker to enjoy his garret. 

As to art matters in those days, my young French 
friends and myself were as ignorant as any Philistine. 
We occasionally roamed through the Louvre, and 
looked languidly at the pictures by Raphael, Eugene 
Delacroix, Poussin, Horace Vernet, Ingres, Meisson- 
nier. Napoleonic pictures appealed to us, but we 
only heard very vaguely of the great landscape men 
and the Barbizon School. When in closer touch 
with intellectual and artistic life in Paris, I soon 
appreciated all the famous French painters, and 
enjoyed their work. I cannot say that I knew many 
artists personally, although I could easily have done 
so. I was once introduced to Carolus Duran, now 
head of the French School in Rome, and found him 
a most genial gentleman. His value as an artist is 
hotly contested, but that is no concern of mine. He 
was one of the Frenchmen whom I have some reason 
to like. He, too, had struggling days in the Latin 
Quarter. Not far from where I lived in the seventies 
— the region of Saint Sulpice — there is a street, that 
of Notre Dame des Champs, wherein stands a cheap 
restaurant ornamented with pictures by Duran, 
Henner, and several other celebrated painters who 
had their meals in the place when they were rapins 



26 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

at the School of Fine Arts. " Most of them have 
their own carriages and cooks now," said the landlord 
of the restaurant to me when I went to visit the 
place in 1885. 

Some of my old student friends of the " Pays 
Latin " keep their own cooks and carriages also. 
They have become prosperous lawyers, doctors, 
chemists, and professors. Even the litUrateurs 
amongst them have not all come to grief. They 
have not, after temporary triumphs, fallen back, like 
Henri Murger and, in later years, Paul Verlaine the 
poet. A few became ^^ brass eurs de lettres," as Zola 
used to say, or notables commergants in the literary 
market. They sold their writings to advantage, and 
if they did not pocket millions (and what French or 
other authors ever do 1), they attained comparatively 
lettered ease. 



CHAPTER III 

Royalists, Bonapartists, and Republicans — The May dates — 
The Due de Broglie and Marshal MacMahon— The 
romance of the MacMahons — Irish kings and French 
noblemen — The doctor and the widow — Bismarck and 
the RepubHc — Gambetta's dinners — Madame de Paiva — 
The onyx staircase. 

CIRCUMSTANCES again compelled me to leave 
France while M. Thiers was President of the 
Republic, and I spent some years in wanderings 
which, if unwise and unprofitable from the practical 
point of view, were fruitful in experience of the 
world. Wherever I was I watched events in France 
very closely, especially after the election of Marshal 
de MacMahon. The events then required very 
careful attention. They followed so quickly that 
Frenchmen themselves were puzzled over dates such 
as the 24th of May, 1873, the i6th of May, 1874, and 
the 1 6th of May, 1877. These periods are continually 
referred to in French newspapers as the 24th of May, 
the 1 6th of May, the date of the year being omitted 
through laziness and ignorance combined. It is hardly 
necessary to remind the intelligent reader that on 
the 24th of May, 1873, the Royalists and Bona- 
partists overthrew Thiers, who was succeeded by 
Marshal de MacMahon. The new President chose 

27 



28 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

as head of his Cabinet the once famous Due de 
Broglie who had been trained in the Guizot school. 
On the 1 6th of May, 1874, the Due de Broglie 
went out, but replaced Jules Simon on the i6th of 
May, 1877. Two years later he and the Marshal 
President were replaced by the out - and - out 
Republicans who shattered the hopes of all who 
were aiming at a monarchical restoration. One of 
the principal events of this period, and one in which 
I took a deep interest even at a distance from 
Paris, was the trial of Marshal Bazaine, who died 
a few years back, a broken-down, destitute man, in 
Madrid, and some of whose relatives have recently 
been trying to clear him from the charges of treason, 
for which he was arraigned in December, 1873. 
As is well known, Bazaine was tried by a court 
martial, of which the Due d'Aumale was President, 
and he was condemned to the penalty of death 
with military degradation for having capitulated 
"■en rase caryipagne''' while Commander-in-Chief of 
the Army of the Rhine. There were three other 
counts in the indictment, one of which charged the 
prisoner with having entered into negotiations with 
the enemy, verbally or in writing, " without having 
previously done all that duty and honour dictated." 
Marshal de MacMahon commuted the death sentence 
into one of detention in a fortress. Bazaine was 
sent to a little Eden of a place — the He Sainte- 
Marguerite in the South of France — whence he 
escaped in August, 1874, and one of his first visits 
on regaining his freedom was to the Empress 
Eugenie. 

Marshal de MacMahon I met several times after 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS r 

his resignation in 1879. I saw him at the garden 
party given by Lord Lyons on the occasion of the 
first Victorian Jubilee. A few years after I ap- 
proached him on the subject of his Memoirs, but 
he refused to pubHsh them for general reading, and 
kept them for his family. I also met the Marshal 
now and again in a street where I lived, and had 
as a neighbour one of his old brothers-in-arms. 
The Marshal was a fine specimen of a soldier, and 
showed his Irish ancestry very remarkably in his 
face. By reason of this he was interesting to me, 
although I have been told that the MacMahons, the 
Marshal included, were, like the Hennessey s of 
cognac celebrity, not always too well pleased to be 
reminded of their ancestry. The modern Hennesseys 
are partly English, partly French. They descend 
from Charles Hennessey, Squire of Ballymacmoy, 
in the County of Cork, who settled in France in 
the eighteenth century and prospered in his com- 
mercial pursuits. 

Marshal de MacMahon's pedigree has been 
frequently contested, but I believe that a French 
writer, M. Alfred Duquet, who has made a study 
of famous soldiers of the First and Second Empires, 
has a correct account of it. M. Duquet worked from 
memoirs of the MacMahon family published in 
France, from a life of the Marshal published in 
Dublin in 1859, from annals of the city of Autun 
in Burgundy, near which town the Marshal's people 
lived, and from other documents, including a strange 
one entitled " Liste des Officiers deserteurs et rebelles 
a leur patrie, denonces dans I'assemble^ nationale, 
Paris, Laurent, 1791." This list is in the French 



30 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

National Library, and from it can be verified the 
fact that the Marquis Charles Laure MacMahon, 
uncle of the Marshal, commanded the 38th 
Dauphin^ regiment at the time of the Great Revo- 
lution, and that he was the first colonel of the 
French Army who passed over to the enemy. He 
subsequently joined the suite of the Comte d'Artois, 
brother of Louis XVI IL 

M. Duquet is not tender towards the memory of 
the Marshal, and spares neither him nor his ancestors. 
He derides the notion that the MacMahons descended 
from Irish kings, or rather he admits the fact, but 
only for the purpose of giving the Irish kings a knock 
on the head. "Green Erin," he writes, "was of old 
spotted all over with Liliputian kingdoms, and each 
petty tyrant claimed the sovereignty of the island." 
M. Duquet might also have quoted one of the numbers 
of Whitaker's Almanack giving a list of the numerous 
Irish kings and of their rivalry and its consequences, 
which were frequently tragic. 

The real and less remote history of the MacMahon 
family is this. I had it from an old French lawyer 
who knew the MacMahons well, and it is corroborated 
by what M. Duquet has written. John Baptist 
MacMahon, grandfather of the Marshal, was born 
at Limerick in June, 17 15, one hundred years 
before the battle of Waterloo. He was the son of 
Patrick MacMahon and Margaret O'Sullivan. This 
MacMahon was sent to France, whither his father 
had gone as a refugee after the battle of Aughrim, at 
the age of sixteen. He studied medicine and received 
a doctor's degree from the University of Rheims 
in August, 1739. He was very poor at the time, 




Photo] 



Marshal MacMahon. 



[E. Appcvt 



To face p. 31. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 31 

and was maintained by an Irish priest settled in 
France. He tried to set up as an apothecary in 
a town in Burgundy, after having been supported for 
a time at Autun by a shoemaker. His horizon 
brightened in 1742, when, under the patronage 
of a royal physician, Antoine Gayton, he was 
permitted to practise at Autun. 

In 1746 Dr. John Baptist MacMahon was called in 
to attend Lazare de Moray, Governor of Vezelay, who 
with his two brothers, Claude, Marquis de Vianges and 
Jacques, Dean of Autun, possessed the finest estate in 
Burgundy. Lazare married, when sixty-eight years 
old, one of his relatives, Charlotte le Belin, who was 
only eighteen. This January and May union was not 
productive of children. The venerable husband died 
without heirs in 1748, and two months afterwards 
Dr. MacMahon was living in his chateau. 

In April, 1750, the doctor married the young widow 
at Sully, in spite of the opposition of her brothers-in- 
law, the marquis and the dean. On the 30th of 
August, 1750, a girl, Fran9oise, was born. A few 
years after the doctor obtained the mastery over the 
marquis and the dean, who disinherited their nieces, 
and made Madame MacMahon their universal legatee. 
The nieces contested the will of the last of the two 
brothers de Moray, and there was a long lawsuit. 
The doctor was triumphant, and by a decision of the 
Parliament of Paris of June, 1763, he and his wife 
entered into possession of property valued at two 
milHon five hundred thousand pounds. MacMahon 
was naturalised since 1749, and was enrolled among 
the nobility in 1750. 

Of this marriage were born Charles Laure Mac- 



32 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Mahon, Marquis de Vianges, Maurice Francois, father 
of the Marshal, Duke of Magenta, and Pierre Mac- 
Mahon. There was a second Jean Baptist MacMahon 
in France at this period. He was cousin of the other, 
and was known as MacMahon of Leadmore. He was 
likewise a doctor of medicine, and was at the Court of 
Frederick the Great of Prussia at the same time as 
Voltaire. It is said that this MacMahon, who in early- 
life was destined for the priesthood, prided himself on 
being an atheist. The fact is recorded in Marechal's 
" Dictionnaire des Athees, anciens et modernes." 
This MacMahon of Leadmore died in Paris in 
September, 1786. 

The father of the Marshal President, Maurice 
Frangois MacMahon, was Lord of Eguilly, of Sivry, of 
Voudenay, and Baron of Sully. He was born at 
Autun in Burgundy, the old Augustodunum of the 
Romans, in October, 1754. He became a lieutenant- 
general in the Royal Army, and in 1792 married at 
Brussels Pelagie Marie Riquet de Caraman, who died 
in 1 8 19. The husband died in 1831. They had five 
sons and four daughters. The Marshal Marie Edme 
Patrice Maurice de MacMahon, Duke of Magenta, 
inherited the title of Count from his brother 
Bonaventure, second son of Maurice FranQois 
MacMahon and the daughter of the Marquis de 
Caraman. The Marshal was married in 1854 to 
Elizabeth Charlotte Sophie de la Croix de Castres. 
It is to be noted that the ennobling particle de is 
not printed in old documents relating to the Mac- 
Mahons. 

In any case, it is satisfactorily settled that if 
Marshal MacMahon did not descend from Brian 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 33 

Boroimhe, the " Brian the Brave " of Moore's song, 
his less remote ancestors were of a good Irish 
stock. His pedigree was better than that of any 
of the other Presidents of the Third French Republic, 
except perhaps M. Carnot and M. Casimir Perier. 
Thiers was the son of a Marseilles blacksmith, and, 
as Grenville Murray wrote long ago, he came to Paris 
to seek his fortune, " with an essay on Vauvenargues 
in his pocket." Jules Grevy sprang from a family 
of peasants of the Jura ; Felix Faure was also of 
humble origin and worked as a tanner when young ; 
Emile Loubet's father was in the mule trade at 
Mont^limar in the South ; and Armand Fallieres 
is from an ordinary Southern struggling stock. 

Of Madame de MacMahon, the Duchesse de 
Magenta, wife of the Marshal, I have but little to 
say. She belonged to a great French family, and 
was more aristocratic than her soldier husband, who 
tried to be civil to everybody. His wife, on the 
other hand, was often distinctly cold towards the 
Republicans who had to be invited to the Elysee 
during the " MacMahonate." This attitude of the 
Duchess embittered the opposition and partially led 
to the campaign organised against her husband. 

I must now attempt to narrate the progress and 
development of the Third Republic and to deal with 
the periods with which I am most familiar. The 
Third Republic, as Herr Bebel reminded M. Jaures 
at the International Congress of 1906 at Amsterdam, 
was the work of Prince Bismarck. This is to a 
great extent true. We have it from the recently 
published memoirs of Prince Hohenlohe, Ambassador 
in Paris from 1874 to 1885. When this diplomatist 

4: 



34 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

was about to be appointed Ambassador he had an 
interview with the Iron Chancellor, who observed that 
" German interests enjoined before all things that 
France should not grow sufficiently powerful inter- 
nally and gain sufficient prestige externally to be able 
to acquire allies. A Republic and domestic ferment 
were a guarantee of peace. He admitted, however, 
that a strong Republic would furnish a bad example 
for monarchical Europe, but it appeared to him, so 
I understood him to say, that the Republic would 
be less dangerous than the Monarchy, which would 
promote all manner of intrigue in foreign countries. 
An Orleanist monarchy would not, however, suit us. 
The Bonapartes would be better, but the existing 
state of things is by far the best." 

Now the same Bismarckian idea as to the advan- 
tages of a French Republic from the German point of 
view comes out in the diary of Comte d'Herisson, 
"Journal dun officier d'ordonnance," published long 
before the memoirs of Prince Hohenlohe— the 
famous " Denkwurdigkeiten " which have caused 
such a flutter in Germany and elsewhere. 

Comte d'Herisson was with Jules Favre at Ver- 
sailles while that statesman was discussing with 
Bismarck the bases of the armistice of January, 1871. 
Jules Favre was plainly told by the Iron Chancellor 
that Germany found it more advantageous to treat 
with the Republicans, because she did not want a 
revival of the Second Empire, which could be brought 
about easily. In the French publication of the pro- 
ceedings in the Arnim case issued by Plon in 1875 
it is also shown that Bismarck instructed Prince 
Hohenlohe, Ambassador in Paris, to oppose in every 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 35 

way any attempt to re-establish the Monarchy and to 
work for the consoHdation of the RepubHc, as a 
Republic was the safest Government from the German 
standpoint. 

Both Gambetta and Jules Ferry conjured up the 
spectre of Germany in order to impress the electors 
during the campaign which led to Marshal MacMahon's 
resignation in 1879. Jules Ferry, as we all know, 
was an ardent advocate of Germany, and tried to 
bring about a rapprochement with that country. 
Gambetta was less disposed to treat with Bismarck, for 
he was afraid to risk his popularity as a patriot. He 
was very near it, however, as we learn from the 
''Correspondence" of Count Henckel Von Donners- 
marck with Gambetta and the two Bismarcks, father 
and son, published in Stuttgart in 1901. 

There is a touch of romance in this part of the 
history of the early period of the Third Republic. 
Count Henckel Von Donnersmarck was the third 
husband of the notorious lady whom the Parisians 
knew as Madame de Paiva. She lived in a magnificent 
private residence in the Champs Elysees, and in 1877, 
and after, many of the principal Republicans frequented 
her salon, to which access was gained by a staircase 
in onyx. This escalier d'onyx was a subject of 
much gossip for many years. 

Madame de Paiva was a Russian adventuress, and 
was currently reported to be a spy for Bismarck. Leon 
Gambetta assiduously attended the lady's receptions, 
and being a notorious bon vivant, he enjoyed her 
French and Russian dinners. Madame de Paiva's 
residence was subsequently taken over by a restaur- 
ateur named Cubat, who failed. It was there that the 



36 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

other famous bon vivant, George Augustus Sala, 
who equalled Gambetta in his love of the good things 
of the table, had one of his last dinners in Paris. He 
narrated at the time in the Daily Telegraph, with great 
wealth of detail, that dinner at Cubat's, which included 
sturgeon stewed in champagne — a dish for Tsars and 
Grand Dukes. 

Returning to Gambetta, his visits to the Hotel 
Paiva induced the husband of the hostess to plan a 
meeting between the French "Tribune" and Bis- 
marck. The latter agreed to see Gambetta at Varzin 
in 1878. They were to talk about a mutual under- 
standing as to the reduction of the war estimates in 
both countries, and also to concert a mutual plan of cam- 
paign against Rome, for Bismarck was at that epoch 
engaged in the kulttirkampf. Bismarck was afraid that 
the French Catholics would obtain the sympathy of 
Austria and become dangerous politically. Gambetta, 
not wishing to compromise his popularity with the 
masses, did not go to Varzin, but in September, 1878, 
he launched his famous phrase, "clericalism is the 
enemy." 

Impartiality precludes me from following either 
Republicans or Monarchists in their contending 
versions of the events leading up to the consolidation 
of the Third Republic. I cannot help noting, how- 
ever, the coincidence of Bebel's remark to M. Jaures 
at the Amsterdam Congress with the contentions of 
the French Conservatives, who continually assert that 
the Third Republic is the Republic of Bismarck. 

The Conservatives go so far as to assert that the 
Republic is still under the heel of Germany, and in 
proof of this they very ably couple the fall of M. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 37 

Delcasse, at the instigation of Prince Bulow in 1905, 
with the recall of Vicomte de Gontaut-Biron from the 
French Embassy at Berlin in 1877. That Ambassador 
was, it is affirmed by the French Conservatives, re- 
called by order of Prince Bismarck, who did not find 
him sufficiently Republican in his sentiments and acts. 
Now, in the Hohenlohe memoirs nothing is said about 
M. de Gontaut-Biron's anti-Republicanism, but it is 
clearly set forth that the French Ambassador was no 
longer a persona grata, to use a cant phrase, with the 
Iron Chancellor, because he curried favour, as a French 
Monarchist, with the old Emperor William, and par- 
ticularly with the Empress Augusta. 

Anyhow, with or without Bismarck, the Third 
French Republic was planted firmly on its feet after 
Marshal de MacMahon resigned in a huff and left the 
Elys^e gladly to his successor, the son of the Jura 
peasant. MacMahon often remarked after his resig- 
nation that he had spent more than his allowance of 
£\Q,ooo a year while Chief of the State. This ex- 
penditure was almost on a Royal or Imperial scale, 
and it has been by no means imitated by the Marshal's 
successors, and certainly not by Jules Gr6vy. 



CHAPTER IV 

The Grevy family — Daniel Wilson — Madame Grevy and the 
King of Greece — M. Wilson and M. de Blowitz — The 
Daily Telegraph Paris office — Newspaper work in Paris — 
The Morning News and Galignani's Messenger — Thackeray 
on Galignani — His " Ballad of Bouillabaisse " recalled — 
Bouillabaisse in Paris and Marseilles. 

PRESIDENT Jules Grevy was one of those 
French Republicans in whom I could never 
take a great interest. Others have raved about his 
intellectual acumen, his legal and general learning, 
and his knowledge of men. All the men of his set — 
Gambetta, Ferry, Spuller, Challemel-Lacour, the 
Pelletans, father and son, his son-in-law, Daniel Wil- 
son, the " Glaswegian," Rouvier — in these I found 
much interest, as I did in the two eminently different 
yet characteristic Frenchmen, Henri Rochefort and 
Georges Clemenceau, also representative Republicans. 
All these men have the merit of undoubted ability, and 
cannot be called commonplace. Jules Ferry was 
notable both as lawyer and journalist. Of Alsatian 
origin, he had read German writers, great and small. 
One of his authors was Hoffmann, writer of the 
" Phantasiestucke," which were printed in 1814. 
These stories appeared in French as the " Contes fan- 
tastiques d' Hoffmann." Ferry sprang into notoriety 

38 




Photo'] 



Jules Grew. 



[Petit 



To face p. 39. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 39 

by parodying this title in his famous newspaper 
articles as the " Comptes fantastiques d'Haussmann," 
in which he joined in the strong criticism on the 
expenditure of Baron Haussmann, Prefect of the 
Seine, who beautified Paris by obliterating slums 
and opening new thoroughfares, but was attacked 
in Parliament in 1869 for alleged mismanagement 
of the city finances. Subsequently Ferry became 
the most notable of Republican statesmen. 

Of the others whom I have mentioned as interest- 
ing, Challemel-Lacour was an undoubted scholar, and 
has written on the German philosophers. The gossips 
credited him with a liaison when he was Ambassa- 
dor in London, the other party being a French laun- 
dress. Whatever may have been his private life, 
Challemel-Lacour had both learning and intellect to 
recommend him. Like Ferry, he was a r^publicain 
de gouvernement. 

Jules Gr^vy was a mere dryasdust lawyer, a com- 
monplace speaker and writer in comparison with the 
others mentioned. He first seems to have entered 
into celebrity as a Republican in 1869, when he 
was returned for his native Jura, obtaining twenty- 
two thousand votes against the eleven thousand given 
to the Imperial candidate. 

At that time other Republicans came into promi- 
nence. Henri Rochefort was already well known as 
the pamphleteer of the Lanterne. Peyrat, Deles- 
cluze, Challemel-Lacour, and several editors were 
tried for raising subscriptions for a monument to 
Baudin, a " victim of the Deux Decembre." They 
were defended by Emmanuel Arago, Gambetta, and 
several less-known lawyers. They were all con- 



40 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

demned, and the Government included some of them 
in a second process which was chiefly aimed at M. 
Hebrard, of the Temps, and two other editors. 
M. Hebrard still lives a "prosperous gendeman." 
He is to be seen any day on the Boulevard des 
Italiens or at the office of his important newspaper. 
I once met him, and found him to be one of the 
most friendly of Frenchmen, and I do not think 
that any members of his efficient staff" of writers 
and reporters can have serious grievances against 
him. 

Another Republican who was to the front In 
those days was Charles Floquet, who subsequendy 
went down in the Panama bubble, after having 
served the Republic faithfully for years. It was 
he who uttered the cry " Vive la Pologne Mon- 
sieur!" as one of the predecessors of the present 
Tsar of Russia was visiting the Palais de Justice 
of Paris. 

Floquet, Ferry, Gambetta, Challemel-Lacour, and 
also Clemenceau and Rochefort, were very much to 
the front during the closing days of the Second 
Empire, but I find little mention anywhere of Jules 
Gr^vy, except in connection with his defeat of the 
Napoleonic candidate in the Jura in 1869. 

He came forward with a vengeance in the eighties, 
shortly after I took up my residence permanently in 
Paris. So also did his son-in-law, Daniel Wilson, 
previously referred to as the " Glaswegian," owing 
to his Scottish ancestry. The gossips of those days 
had a good deal to say about Jules Grdvy and M. 
Wilson's mother, as well as about M. Wilson himself 
and Madame Grevy. The Chief of the State, who 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 41 

succeeded MacMahon, was popularly and also socially- 
supposed to have married his cook when he was a 
struggling barrister, and before his connection with 
politics assisted him in occasionally securing fat briefs 
for guano and other commercial companies. Madame 
Grevy was known to the facetious as "Coralie," and 
there was a story sedulously circulated in Paris to 
the effect that she once playfully asked King George 
of Greece " how his Belle Helene was getting on ? " 

M. Daniel Wilson was also frequently called the 
*' Dauphin " in those days, as he married Made- 
moiselle Marguerite Gr^vy. He had belonged to 
the fast set in his youth, and was among those who 
took the Cora Pearls and the Fanny Howards of the 
time to supper at the celebrated Cafe Anglais on the 
Boulevard des Italiens, which G. A. Sala used to 
describe as a sepulchre, owing to Its white frontage 
and rather monumental aspect. Cjhose suppers at the 
Caf6 Anglais have often been written about in books 
on Paris, and are still recalled occasionally in news- 
papers. There have been some livelier suppers under 
the Third Republic, notably one some years since, 
when a crowd of rich rakes had at table one nipfht in 
a restaurant not far from the Caf6 Anglais a bevy of 
belles de nuit, collected from the streets, and who, 
after they became intoxicated with champagne, be- 
haved like furies let loose from hell. Some tried to 
dance among the glasses on the table, and others 
rushed madly around the room, as Hans Breitmann 
might say, "mid fery leetle on." 

I must confess that I was rather sorry for Daniel 
Wilson's fall. I first met him at a boat race on the 
Seine, of which sporting event he was umpire and 



42 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

adjudicator to the winners of the Sevres cup offered 
by his father-in-law. He impressed me very favour- 
ably as he talked excellent English to Mr. G , the 

English undertaker, who was one of the organisers of 
the race. Wilson was then a tall, brown-bearded and 
fair-haired man, who might pass for a German or 
Austrian. I saw him afterwards with M. de Blowitz, 
of the Times, on the occasion of the unveiling of 
the Washington statue in the Place des Etats-Unis, a 
Franco-American ceremony at which Mr. Levi Mor- 
ton, then American Minister, not Ambassador, for that 
title was accorded later, presided. That was only a 
short time before M. Wilson had to retire from 
political life over the traffic in " decorations," and by 
reason of the fall of his father-in-law. He went to 
live with his children in the magnificent residence of 
his father-in-law in the Jena Avenue, a building con- 
structed with the money made and saved by M. Grevy 
at the Elys^e. 

It was just before this period, in 1884, that I 
obtained a place in the Paris office of the Daily 
Telegraph, and became more in touch with events 
that were happening. Previously my contributions 
of the literary or journalistic order had been confined 
to papers such as the Weekly Graphic, for which, 
when Mr. Locker was editor, I wrote a good many 
articles on French life and events happening in 
France. It was through my old and valued friend, 
Herman Charles Merivale, that I obtained an intro- 
duction to Mr., afterwards Sir, Campbell Clarke, who 
had succeeded after an interval Felix Whitehurst as 
Paris Correspondent of the great daily of Peterborough 
Court. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 43 

I often wondered how I, an obscure Irishman, 
an adventurer, managed to enter the Daily Telegraph 
office in Paris. When I first came to London, a 
raw youth, with foolish ambitions, I tried to obtain 
employment on the Telegraph, but I might as 
well have asked for a well-paid sinecure in the 
Royal household. An editor with whom I had 
some dealings, having written occasionally for his 
weekly sheet, advised me to send an article to the 
Telegraph as a specimen of my art. That editor 
was, of course, fooling me to the top of my bent ; but, 
believing the man was serious, I wrote an article on 
the " Infallibility of the Pope," and sent it boldly to 
the Telegraph. My article was actually critical of 
an editorial which had appeared in the Telegraph 
on the same subject, namely " Papal Infallibility." 
Naturally, I received no invitation either to assist Mr., 
afterwards Sir, Edwin Arnold in editing the Daily 
Telegraph or even to become a " new man " among 
the reporters or "subs." 

My false friend the editor of the weekly chuckled 
when he heard that I had sent an article on Papal 
Infallibility to Peterborough Court. I was disgusted 
both with him and with the editor of the Telegraph, 
and after knocking vainly at other doors, I gave up 
the idea of settling in London as a journalist or 
author, and did anything for a living. 

It was strange that years after my discomfiture 
in Fleet Street my chance should come from the same 
great paper to which I had sent the unlucky ecclesi- 
astical article, which has long been consigned to the 
waste-paper basket. 

Herman Merivale, who was instrumental in getting 



44 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

me work on the Telegraph, lived for some time 
at Eastbourne. I called on him for the purpose of 
writing something about his career as a dramatist for 
a local paper and for a London monthly. He gave 
me full particulars of his stage career, and I wrote 
them out. He had only some time previously been 
connected with the production of an adaptation from 
the French, and he was busily engaged in literary 
work, writing every week for the Spectator, besides 
doing articles for reviews. 

Merivale introduced me to his estimable wife, who 
collaborated a good deal with him later on. To our 
mutual surprise Mrs. Merivale and I found that we 
were not only Irish, but that we came from the same 
town. After that I was a frequent visitor to Hazard 
Side, the name of Merivale's residence in the Sussex 
seaside town. When I told him that after a third 
ineffectual effort to obtain regular employment on 
a London paper, I proposed to return to Paris, and to 
do anything there that my hands could find to do, he 
at once offered to give me a letter to his old friend 
Campbell Clarke. 

Nearly two years elapsed ere I availed myself of 
Merivale's kindness. I was in Paris working in a 
lawyer's office by day and writing for chance news- 
papers by night, when it occurred to me that it would 
be more profitable to seek permanent employment on 
a journal. 

At that time a Mr. Chamberlain, who had been 
private secretary to Mr. James Gordon Bennett, 
founded a smart little daily in Paris called the 
Morning News. To this contributed some of the 
London Correspondents in Paris, notably J. Clifford 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 45 

Millage of the Chronicle, Theodore Child of the 
World and the Illustrated London News, and who 
had formerly been working with Campbell Clarke 
on the Telegraph, Vandam of the Globe, and, I 
believe, Mr. Richard Whiteing, to whose book, "Living 
Paris," I added some pages for the edition prepared in 
view of the Exhibition of 1889. Joined with Mr. 
Chamberlain in the working of the Morning News 
was Mr. Ives, who had also been in the employment 
of Mr. J. G. Bennett. 

I entered into negotiations for a place on the 
Morning News, and, to my delight, one day received 
a genial letter from Mr. Chamberlain asking 
me to walk round to his office. By the same post 
came a letter from Herman Merivale, telling me to go 
to see his friend Campbell Clarke at once. I hesitated 
between the two letters. Campbell Clarke I did not 
know then, and Chamberlain I had found to be an 
excellent fellow — one of those men, in fact, who are 
too good to be editors. After a few moments of 
indecision I made up my mind and saw Campbell 
Clarke, who engaged me to assist him and Mr. 
Ozanne at a good wage. I remained over twenty- 
two years in the Paris office of the Daily Telegraph, 
and have no reason to regret it. My dream, however, 
of a literary life was at an end, and I saw that it would 
be impossible to earn enough to keep me in Paris 
comfortably without binding myself to a regular daily 
routine. 

As to Chamberlain, I never saw him again. 
Mr. Ives, I beHeve, is still an active journalist. As 
to the Morning News it only lasted about eight 
months, and then became amalgamated mysteriously 



46 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

with the American Register, owned by Dr. Evans, 
the American dentist, who with some others helped 
the Empress Eugenie to reach Sir John Burgoyne's 
yacht, and to escape to England on the fall of the 
Second Empire. The little News, which was 
undoubtedly a bright paper, was killed by that mighty 
potentate In the newspaper world, Mr. James Gordon 
Bennett, when he founded the Paris Herald, one of 
the most newsy as well as one of the most enter- 
taining journals ever printed. Chamberlain made a 
final effort to keep the News afloat on the strength 
of sixteen thousand francs borrowed from Mr. Levi 
Morton, the U.S. Minister already referred to, but the 
effort proved futile. 

About the same period the once famous Galignanis 
Messenger received its death-stroke from the same 
source. Galignani lingered, but only in a con- 
sumptive state, for several years after it passed from 
the heirs of the two brothers who founded it into the 
hands of Mr. Bennett and others. Mr. Bennett gave 
it up ; it returned to the Galignani family, represented 
by M. Jeancourt, who continued to direct it in 
connection with the library and shop, but again 
transferred it, this time to the Horatio Bottomley 
group. It was also for a time in the hands of Messrs. 
Sewell and Maugham, the English solicitors of the 
Faubourg St. Honore, and I believe it numbered then 
among its contributors the author of " 'Lisa of Lam- 
beth" and other notable novels, W. Somerset 
Maugham. Finally Galignani changed title and 
was conducted for several years by various proprietors 
as The Daily Messenger, the last editor being Mr. 
R. Lane, who subsequently became manager of the 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 47 

Paris Daily Mail. Galignani had long been a 
landmark in the British colony in Paris. At one time 
it had contributors such as Edward King and 
Theodore Staunton, Americans, and Englishmen, 
among whom may be mentioned Theodore Child, 
E. H. Barker, author of " Wanderings by Southern 
Waters," now British Vice-Consul at Treport, and 
H. F. Wood, of the Morning Advertiser, who wrote 
the *' Passenger from Scotland Yard," "The English- 
man of the Rue Cain," and a valuable book on Egypt. 
One of the contributors to Galignani was also Mr. 
Thomas Longhurst, of the Economist, who may claim 
to be the oldest British inhabitant of Paris, for he 
joined the firm of Messrs. Galignani far back in the 
fifties. The Galignanis, as is pretty well known, were 
Italians from Brescia, who, after a career as couriers in 
the old days before Messrs. Cook were in business, 
settled in Paris, opened the library and bookshop of 
the Rue de Rivoli, which has been patronised by 
many celebrities, English and French, and founded 
their daily newspaper, then a boon to travellers on 
the Continent. 

I wrote once for Galignani, but not in prose. It 
was a brief funeral dirge on the occasion of the death 
of the survivor of the two " brave Brescians," as they 
were called in the Standard. It was published over 
my initials, and caused a slight uproar among certain 
British colonists, who resented my audacity in trying to 
pose as what they were pleased to call a poet. Shortly 
afterwards I applied, audaciously, for the second time, 
for a post on Galignani, but was told amiably the old, 
old story, that there was no vacancy on the staff. I 
afterwards learned from my friend E. H. Barker, 



48 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

already referred to, and who was for a long time on 
the Galignani staff, with his friend Mr. Galigan, an 
interesting Irishman from Leeds, that the way to get 
on the paper was "to make yourself a nuisance until 
they engaged you." This recipe was given to Mr. 
Barker by the old correspondent of the Standard in 
Paris, Mr. Hely Bowes, who with his father had been 
connected with the paper founded by the " brave 
Brescians " in the days when Thackeray, Dickens, 
and Wilkie Collins were temporary residents in Paris. 
I must not forget to mention that no less a person 
than Thackeray was once a sub-editor on Galignani. 
In a letter written by the author of " Pendennis " to 
Mrs. Brookfield, dated November, 1848, he says : " I 
am glad to see among the new inspectors in the 
' Gazette ' in this morning's papers my old acquaintance, 
Longueville Jones, an excellent, worthy, lively, 
accomplished fellow, whom I like the better because 
he threw up his fellow and tutorship at Cambridge 
in order to marry on nothing a year. We worked 
on Galignani s Messenger for ten francs a day, very 
cheerfully, ten years ago, since when he has been a 
schoolmaster, taken pupils, or bid for them, and 
battled manfully wuth fortune." According to a con- 
tributor to the Gentleman s Magazine, it was twelve 
and not ten years before the writing of that letter 
that Thackeray had been one of the two sub-editors 
on the "little quarto newspaper no bigger than an 
old-fashioned sheet of letter-paper." Galignani was 
certainly a very small sheet then, as may be seen 
from an inspection of the files in the old offices in 
the Rue de Rivoli. It subsequently attained the 
size of an ordinary modern daily newspaper. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 49 

It was, doubtless, while connected with Galignani 
that Thackeray gained experience for his " Paris 
Sketch Book " and the immortal " Ballad of 
Bouillabaisse," The tavern and the "New Street of 
the Little Fields " would be near Galignani's offices. 
The " hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes " was no 
doubt good. I have had better Bouillabaisse so 
far as variety of fish went, in Paris than in Mar- 
seilles. In the latter place they give lobster, 
rouget de Marseille, and a few bits of small shell- 
fish. In Paris you get bits of fish from northern 
as well as southern waters, and also lobster and 
mussels. The garlic flavouring is better in Marseilles, 
as the ail of the midi is superior to that sold in the 
north. The fashionable place for Bouillabaisse at 
Marseilles is at Roubion's, on the Corniche, but I have 
had it as good at Pascal's and at places on the 
quays. 

Still alluding to Thackeray, I must record here that 
he was supposed to have also been a frequenter of the 
Cafe de Londres, near the Madeleine. I was taken 
there once by the late J. Clifford Millage, who knew 
Paris well. We tasted some Scotch whisky which, 
according to Millage, had been in the cellars of the 
cafe since the time of Thackeray. 



CHAPTER V 

La haute politique — The Egyptian Question — The Near 
East — Mr. Lavino and Russia — M. de Blowitz saves France 
— The real importance of M. de Blowitz — His remarkable 
position — Bismarck and Ferry — Bits of big news — ThedEall 
of Ferry. 

WHEN I joined the staff of the Daily Telegraph 
in Paris in March, 1884, what is known as 
la haute politique was in the ascendant. I was not 
engaged to write on poHtical subjects of an inter- 
national character, but to watch home politics, to be 
present at Communist or Anarchist meetings, and to 
take my turn at the theatres when Mr. Campbell 
Clarke was unable to attend the production of new 
plays. The work was constant and absorbing, and 
it soon made me think that I had no past and no 
future. I felt that I had always been at it, that I 
had never had any parents, and that I had received 
no education whatever. Campbell Clarke was a most 
courteous man, but he sometimes contrived to make 
those with him feel that they were utter and absolute 
nonentities. And this was done without any 
hectoring, blustering, or arrogance. 

In those years of pure hack work I again learned 
a good deal. My wandering life in early years had 
brought me into touch with all conditions of men, 

50 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 51 

and I attained to a very considerable knowledge of 
human nature, which, despite what some of the 
psychologists say, is at bottom much the same. It 
is actuated by the same impulses in France and 
England, as well as elsewhere, although it may be 
true that, as Mr. Henry James remarks somewhere in 
*' The Tragic Muse," " a poor man does not believe 
anything in the same way that a rich man does." 

Now, in a new atmosphere, I began to see how 
things were worked in France more closely than 
before. For about four years after joining the 
Telegraph staff in Paris I had, in order to watch 
home politics, to attend the Chamber of Deputies 
nearly every day. In the late afternoon I returned 
to the office of the Telegraph, then in the Place 
de rOp^ra, wrote out a report on the business in the 
Chamber, and assisted in clearing off the events of 
the day. When I reached home after midnight, I 
realised that I was earning my money. 

If I had not to deal directly with the haute politique, 
I began to learn a good deal about it through occasion- 
ally condensing articles from the Temps and the Ddbats. 
These condensations or analyses were to follow the 
more or less original remarks of the chief Correspon- 
dent. In this way I became a small authority on the 
Egyptian Question, for instance, which was paramount 
then. I felt proud in knowing something about the 
** Law of Liquidation," and could criticise its defects, 
notably as regards the provision by which it was 
enacted that if in any year the revenues assigned to 
the bond-holders should fail to cover the interest on 
the debt, the balance should be taken from the 
revenues at the disposal of the Treasury, the adminis- 



52 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

tration being thus jeopardised, as it ran the risk of 
collapse if called upon to provide for any extraordinary 
outlay. 

Although never in Egypt, I was able to keep 
before my mind's eye in connection with the financial 
state of the country in 1884 the Kharadji lands and 
the Ushuri lands, the former being taxed up to a 
certain extent by the administration, while the others 
given to Moslems were only liable to the tithes 
prescribed by the Koran. The Egyptian Question 
was dealt with almost daily at that time by the 
brothers Charmes, who wrote for the D^bats, while in 
England then, as now, the leading authority was Mr. 
E. Dicey, C.B. Mr. Dicey, who was then editor of 
the Observer, was a frequent visitor to the residence 
of Mr. and Mrs. Campbell Clarke, as they were 
known then. I last saw Mr. Dicey in Paris when he 
was specially commissioned by his old friend, Sir 
Edward Lawson, now Lord Burnham, to attend the 
funeral of the Due d'Aumale. 

Events in Egypt were, however, overshadowed in 
1884 by the still higher politics of the nearer East. 
The Balkan Peninsula was in the thoughts of every 
politician, and speculations were afloat as to the 
designs of Russia, as well as of Prince Bismarck, who 
was hatching surprises for France. Russia was well 
watched at that time by Mr. William Lavino, then 
Correspondent of the Telegraph at Vienna, whither he 
went after an apprenticeship under Campbell Clarke, 
and who has since obtained the succession of the 
celebrated M. de Blowitz. Mr. Lavino was for 
about two years in the Paris office of the Telegraph, 
and I use the term " apprenticeship " advisedly, 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 53 

for Campbell Clarke, although in later years he 
did not follow politics closely, was at one time a 
good authority on international problems. He was, 
moreover, in touch with many ambassadors and 
diplomatists, and could have held his own with M. 
de Blowitz had he the special ambition and the 
spasmodic energy of that noted journalist, as well 
as his incentives to keep to constant work. M. de 
Blowitz, it must be remembered, was not a rich man, 
whereas Campbell Clarke was a member of the family 
of the chief of the paper which he represented in 
Paris. 

While Mr. Lavino was thus watching Russia from 
his vantage-ground in Vienna, we in Paris kept our 
eyes on Bismarck and on the storm clouds drifting 
over France from Germany. These, as is well 
known, rolled temporarily away while Jules Ferry was 
at the Quai d'Orsay as French Foreign Minister. 

There had been ominous mutterings of war ever 
since 1875. That epoch, its alarms, the scare at the 
time were ably dealt with by M. de Blowitz, who was 
much chaffed, then and after, for his seemingly 
bombastic claims to an influence on the events that 
were happening. He even asserted to have had 
a hand in averting the danger from France. There 
was a story current at the time that leading French- 
men and French women used to say to the Times 
Correspondent, " Blowitz, save us, save everybody, 
save France," and then they hugged the little man 
who was supposed to be both omnipotent and omnis- 
cient. The publication of the Hohenlohe memoirs 
has shown that M. de Blowitz was closely identified 
with the events of 1875. The entry alluding to his 



54 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

intervention is worth quoting. Referring to a meeting 
between Prince Hohenlohe and M. de Blowitz in May, 
1875, ^t a soiree given by the Due Decazes, French 
Foreign Minister, when the Times Correspondent 
intimated that he was about to " write an article " 
on the prevailing anxieties, the memoirs state : "He 
[Blowitz] has not paid any regard to my objections 
because, as I have since learned, he was convinced 
that by frankly describing the prevalent anxieties he 
would evoke a reply in the form of declarations which 
would help to establish peace. But he has gone 
further than he told me that he intended to go. His 
line of argument, which in conversation bore an 
impartial character, has become what I warned him 
that it might become, an attack upon Germany. The 
editorial department of the Times received his article 
on May 5th, and then telegraphed to various Corre- 
spondents on the Continent for information on the 
points discussed in Blowitz's despatch, and perhaps also 
London politicians were consulted. It was only 
when, as the Times believed, it had convinced itself of 
the accuracy of Blowitz's statements that it had the 
article printed. ... It was a tactless performance in 
the French interest invented by Blowitz, by which he 
thought that he was doing good and that he was 
working in the cause of the peace of Europe." 

This shows the intervention of M. de Blowitz in 
the events of the year 1875 pretty clearly. No 
French or English journalist could have done what 
Blowitz did then. There are numerous references to 
him in these Hohenlohe pages of revelations, and 
they show his importance in Europe. It was no 
wonder that the French journalists resented his 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 55 

influence, for he made them horribly jealous, one of his 
chief enemies being the Bonapartist champion, Paul 
de Cassagnac. Towards his declining days the 
French journalists sat in judgment on the once 
powerful Correspondent of the Times, and resented 
his naturalisation as a Frenchman. He was repudi- 
ated as the most bitter enemy of France in Europe 
and the representative of the ''Journal de la Citd,'' as 
many Frenchman term the Times, was practically 
excommunicated with journalistic bell, book and 
candle in April, 1895. 

I propose to refer later on to this most remarkable 
man whom I met on several occasions in Paris and 
other places, and whom I saw when he was at the 
zenith of his prestige, a "great personage," as the 
French used to say, as well in his decline when his 
eyesight was failing and shortly before the time when 
on a bed of sickness he remarked to those around 
that "his little dog could be poisoned and sent out of 
life, but that such a process was impossible in his 
own case." 

The clouds gathering since 1875 were, as I have 
said, scattered temporarily during Jules Ferry's stay 
at the Quai d'Orsay. Strangely enough, the first 
news of the proposed rapprochement between France 
and Germany did not emanate from the office of 
the Times in Paris, but from that of the Daily 
Telegraph. This period is also referred to in the 
Hohenlohe memoirs. In August, 1884, the Prince 
says about the Franco-German rapprochement under 
the auspices of Ferry, " In the West African question 
there will be common action as likewise with regard 
to various Egyptian questions, such as the quarantine, 



56 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

the Suez Canal, the Liquidation Commission," &c. In 
the same memoirs it is also written that in November, 
1884, Prince Hohenlohe had an audience of the old 
Emperor William, who spoke of the good relations 
with France and smiled. The old Emperor also sent 
his greetings to Ferry, " of whom he had a high 
opinion." " I was to say to Ferry," writes Prince 
Hohenlohe, "that we did not desire a quarrel between 
England and France. Just let Gladstone go on," &c. 

Bismarck was fooling Ferry at the same time, and 
a few years before the rapprochement was discussed 
he had said to Prince Hohenlohe at Varzin that 
Germany must wish France every success in Africa, 
so that her attention might be drawn away from 
the Rhine, and he subsequently said cynically 
Germany could quietly look on when the English 
and the French locomotives anywhere came into 
collision." 

The first news of this rapprochement, under which 
Jules Ferry volunteered to get the question of the 
lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine shelved in 
return for advantages from Germany, a proceeding 
which brought great trouble on his head subsequently 
from the Patriotic League of Paul D^roulede, came, 
as I said, from the Daily Telegraph office in Paris. 

This is how it happened. One morning Mr. 
Ozanne and I were walking on the Boulevard des 
Capucines when we met Herr Singer, a once well- 
known man in Paris. He was then Correspondent 
of the New Free Press, which he left to take over 
the editorship of the Vienna Tagblatt. Herr Singer 
was patronised a good deal at this time by Jules 
Ferry. He was even more friendly with that 




M. DE Blowitz on the way to his Office. 



[Foulsham & Banfield 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 57 

statesman than M. de Blowltz himself. Singer told 
Ozanne and myself quite freely and generously that 
he had just seen Ferry, who spoke about the pro- 
jected rapprochement with Germany. Mr. Ozanne 
telegraphed the news to London that night, and it 
caused an enormous sensation at the time. 

That was what has since been termed in Trans- 
atlantic phrase a "scoop" or a "beat." We had 
another "scoop" of the same sort, and this I was 
able to claim for myself. Mr. John M. Le Sage 
telegraphed from London one morning asking if it 
were true that the French troops had suffered reverses 
in Tonkin. Mr. Campbell Clarke was away at the 
time, and the telegram was opened by Mr. Ozanne. 
He consulted with me on the matter, asked if I 
knew anybody who could enlighten us, and so on. 
There was not a word about the French reverses in 
any of the newspapers. It was useless to apply to 
the Foreign Office, so I went straight to the American 
Legation, now an Embassy, where I had a friend, and 
obtained there the information that I wanted. The 
French had been defeated, and Jules Ferry had 
expressed his anxiety as to the safety of the troops 
and the results of the campaign. 

Going back to the Telegraph office, I communicated 
my intelligence to Mr. Ozanne, who sent it over 
in a brief but pregnant despatch, in which there 
was no beating around the bush or semi-diplomatic 
"bluff." The news was there in a nutshell. The 
French had been defeated and the Foreign Minister, 
M. Jules Ferry, was in a state of anxiety. That bit 
of information resounded through Europe next 
morning. It thrilled the Bourses of Paris, Berlin, 



58 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

and Vienna, and sent a shiver through the Stock 
Exchange of London. French Rentes fell, and there 
was almost a panic. Had we been as some of our 
French colleagues, who have a keen scent for finance, 
we might have realised a good sum out of our news. 
M. Vervoort, a spasmodic writer for the Press, once 
said that there were two sorts of journalists, " those 
who did the dead dogs and those who did good 
business " — " Ceux qui font les chiens crev6s, et 
ceux qui font des affaires." The "dead dogs" was 
an allusion to Villemessant's saying after he founded 
the Figaro, that the Parisians took more interest 
in a doe run over and crushed on the boulevards 
than on events happening elsewhere. 

In this instance of the news about the French 
reverse in Tonkin Mr. Ozanne and myself remained 
strictly on the honourable side and did no "business," 
althoueh we had shaken the Bourses. The affair 
also led to a question in the Chamber from no less 
a person than M. Clemenceau, Ferry's formidable 
opponent, and it caused some uneasiness to M. de 
Blowitz. In the meantime the French went from 
bad to worse in Tonkin, and Jules Ferry had to resign 
in the early part of 1885 owing to the Langson 
disaster. 




Photo] 



Jules Ferry. 



[Petit 



To face p. 58. 



CHAPTER VI 

At the Chamber of Deputies — The Fenians in Paris — James 
Stephens and Eugene Davis — The " resources of civiHsa- 
tion" — The Irish Ambassador — The trial of Madame Clovis 
Hugues — The tragedy in a newspaper office — Victor 
Hugo's death and funeral — Pasteur and his rabbits — My 
meetings with Pasteur — His views on Gladstone and 
Parnell — My meeting with M. Clemenceau — Mrs. Crawford, 
Mr. Cremer, and M. Clemenceau — M. Clemenceau then and 
now— M. Clemenceau and M. Jaures. 

THE news sent from the Paris office of the Daily 
Telegraph relative to the difficulties surrounding 
Jules Ferry, and also the information as to that 
statesman's efforts to bring about an entente 
cordiale, to use an expression much heard of in 
these days, with Germany, caused, as I have said, 
a good deal of commotion throughout Europe. 
The French journalists, jealous as usual, wrote, 
according to their custom, at the foreign Correspon- 
dents, whom they described as going about periodically 
from Embassy to Embassy, and from Legation to 
Legation, begging or cadging for news. It was 
utterly useless on my part to remind these people that 
foreign Correspondents did not always have to beg 
for bits of news at the Foreign Office or at the 
Embassies, but that they got information, as I had 



60 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

done, from a sure and friendly source, that my bit of 
intelligence, which had shaken the Bourses and the 
Stock Exchange, was given to me for my own use 
and to oblige me. 

The unkindest cut of all was when my chief, 
Campbell Clarke, returning from London, seemed to 
object to the remarkable activity displayed and the 
success achieved by Mr. Ozanne and myself during 
his absence. I can understand now why he objected, 
but at that time I had no intention whatever of doing 
anything over his head, and was innocent of the 
guiles of journalism. I went straight for information 
out of a sense of duty to the paper. I was not at 
that time experienced enough to realise the difficulties 
with which a second or third Correspondent of the 
leading papers has to cope with in Paris. I bought 
the experience dearly afterwards, both inside and out- 
side the office of the Daily Telegraph. 

Just before Jules Ferry's fall in the early part of 
1885 my colleague, Mr. Ozanne, was sent to Berlin for 
the Congo Conference. Then ensued for me a period 
of extra hard work, under which I would assuredly 
have broken down had I been a weaker man. At the 
time I might have been called the "shadow" or the 
*' skeleton," owing to my thin and almost cadaverous 
appearance. Outwardly weak-looking, I was pos- 
sessed of an inward fund of strength which carried 
me through everything. 

I had to attend the office in the morning at eleven 
o'clock to talk over, or rehearse as it were, what was 
to be done during the day. At twelve I lunched, and 
was at the Chamber of Deputies, one of the dreariest 
places that a Correspondent has to keep in touch with, 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 61 

by two o'clock. At four in the afternoon I had to 
begin writing so as to have a good deal of copy ready 
by six o'clock. At seven in the evening I dined, 
returning to the office at half-past eight o'clock and 
remaining there until midnight, and sometimes later. 

This sort of life was rendered less monotonous by 
a few events of some interest which commanded my 
attention. One was the expulsion of the Fenians from 
Paris, and the other was the trial of Madame Clovis 
Hugues, wife of the poet who imitates Victor Hugo, 
and who is also a politician. This lady had riddled 
with revolver bullets a man who had defamed her. 

To take the Fenians first, it must be stated that 
Paris had harboured for some years several men who 
had been connected with the troubles in Ireland in 
1866 or thereabouts. Foremost among these was 
James Stephens, who had been known as the *' Head 
Centre " of the Fenian brotherhood, and who sought 
shelter In Paris, where he lived in a very humble way. 
After him came Eugene Davis, a rather interesting 
man, who was a writer of excellent verse and a good 
journalist. Davis had been an ecclesiastical student 
in youth, but showed very little of the ecclesiastical 
spirit in his manhood. He it was, I believe, who first 
referred to dynamite as among "the resources of 
civilisation." There were other Fenians, or alleged 
Fenians, in Paris then gravitating around the greater 
"brothers " Stephens and Davis. 

These men were in the habit of meeting at the Irish- 
American bar, near the Madeleine, a long-vanished 
establishment, and at a cheaper place of refreshment 
in a street off" the Faubourg St. Honore, known as 
the "Irish Ambassador's." The "Ambassador," or 



62 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

landlord, was a genuine Irishman, and kept a genuine 
" shebeen " for the sale of wine, whisky, and beer to 
ostlers, to servants, and to the Irish of various 
categories who patronised his bar. 

The dynamite explosions in the Houses of Parlia- 
ment at Westminster in 1885 caused some activity 
among Scotland Yard detectives, some of whom, 
including, I believe, Mr. Melville, recently retired, 
were sent to Paris to watch the movements of the 
Fenians, or supposed Fenians, there. 

As a matter of fact the so-called Fenians in Paris 
were perfectly quiet if not harmless. Stephens was 
an old man who wanted to smoke his pipe in peace, 
while Eugene Davis and the rest did more talking 
than acting. 

J. C. Millage, then Correspondent of the Daily 
Chronicle, began to write sensational paragraphs 
about the " Fenians in Paris," " Meetings of the 
Clan-na-Gael," and so on. It was this that attracted 
the attention of Scotland Yard, and the result was 
that the French Government expelled Stephens, 
Davis, and some of the others from Paris, where 
they had their homes. Stephens went to Brussels, 
where he died, after having received help from 
Ireland through the instrumentality of Mr. Dwyer 
Gray, the former director of the Freeman s Journal 
Davis went to Geneva, where he also died, and no 
more was heard of Fenians in Paris. Through 
Millage's sensational paragraphs I was also led into 
the trap, and believed temporarily that the Fenians 
were holding meetings in all sorts of places. It was 
the "Irish Ambassador" who first informed me that 
there were no Fenian hole-and-corner or any other 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 63 

sort of meetings in Paris, and that the reports circulated 
about such assembHes were only for ''scare" purposes. 
The real or alleged Fenians in Paris were enjoying 
the joke immensely, and were glad of the attention 
directed to them by the newspapers, but they were of 
a different opinion when they received notice to quit 
French territory within twenty-four hours. At that 
time Lord Lyons was British Ambassador. His rival 
and neighbour, the " Irish Ambassador," was, as well 
as I can remember, a Mr. Cullen, and he was by no 
means a patrician. 

The next event which I had to deal with after 
the expulsion of the Fenians was the vengeance of 
Madame Clovis Hugues, wife of the poet-deputy. 
A man named Morin, who lived in the same house as 
the lady, was said to have circulated very scandalous 
reports about Madame Hugues. She heard this and, 
armed with a revolver, met Morin on the staircase. 
Before he could escape the man was peppered with 
bullets. He was carried to hospital, where I saw him 
at night, a terrible object to behold. I telegraphed to 
London a full account of the tragedy, and next day 
was surprised to find that Reuter's Correspondent and 
some of the others had made Madame Hugues kill 
Morin straight off. As I had been to the hospital 
late at night I knew that this was not the case. The 
man lingered for nearly a week in the most terrible 
pain, and then died. 

The next excitement arose over the trial of Madame 
Hugues. That event gave me a good deal of trouble. 
It continued all day and all night, and in the mean- 
time there was a fearful shooting tragedy in the 
offices of the Communist newspaper, Le Cri du Peuple. 



64 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

I had to deal with the two events, as my chief was 
busy watching the rehearsal and production of a new 
opera by Charles Gounod. 

By dint of writing all the afternoon after having 
been at the Palais de Justice in the morning, I sent 
long accounts of the trial and of the newspaper office 
tragedy across the wire. Then I had to remain up 
all night for the verdict, which I heard read out at 
two o'clock in the morning at the Palais. I had to 
take a cab across the river to the night telegraph 
office of the Bourse, and found waiting there J. C. 
Millage of the Chronicle and Harry Meltzer of the 
New York Herald, who attacked me for the result of 
the trial, which I gave them. 

The tragedy in the newspaper office was of less 
importance than the trial, especially as nobody was 
dangerously hurt. Two brothers, police officials, had 
burst into the Cri du Peuple office to obtain satisfac- 
tion for a libel on their mother. They fired at every- 
body and anybody in the editorial rooms and then 
departed. The Cri du Peuple was for some years 
directed by Jules Valles, the Communist, who died 
about the time of the tragedy in his office. He was 
assisted in his editorial work by a lady journalist of 
celebrity, who had a monumental dispute with Henri 
Rochefort after the Boulangist epoch, when most of 
the people who had been in the circle of that unlucky 
agitator. General Boulanger, quarrelled with one 
another. 

A very notable event which happened in the year 
1885 was the death of Victor Hugo, whom I never 
met and never wanted to meet. To me he was always 
one of the over-rated and over-boomed category of 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 65 

celebrities. I used to enjoy some of his best poetry, 
but I remembered and realised that he was called by 
Amiel "half genius, half charlatan." Mr. Swinburne, 
of course, wrote about him in the deep dithyrambic 
vein, as he wrote about the minor poet, Theophile 
Gautier. Yet, in spite of all the incessant booming of 
Hugo and his work, the poet did not leave the large 
fortune behind that was expected. People used to 
talk about the millions of francs realised by the sale 
of his volumes of poetry and fiction, but, as a matter 
of fact, the estate was worth comparatively little. 

Hugo's death in 1885 was preceded by about a fort- 
night's illness, which kept the French reporters and 
the foreign Correspondents on the alert. It was a 
most trying time for the men of the Press, who had 
to be ringing at the door of the poet's private residence 
every hour for news of the dying man. Meltzer of 
the New York Herald and a few others lived prac- 
tically day and night in a second-class cafe, or rather 
tavern, immediately opposite the house. I had to 
drive out to the place from time to time, and before 
going home at night I had to call at the office of the 
Rappel newspaper, which was conducted by Auguste 
Vacquerie, one of the family of the poet, and who with 
Paul Meurice, was long the guardian of the great man's 
memory. Vacquerie's attitude towards Hugo was that 
of a devoted slave and consummate flatterer. It was 
hard to know if he really believed that the maitre was 
the heaven-inspired, semi-celestial being that he seemed 
to regard him, or an ordinary literary man, gifted 
with the power of writing occasionally fine and fiery 
rhetoric in verse. Anyhow, Vacquerie took Hugo 
carefully for his model and wrote a drama, " Tragal- 

6 



66 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

dabas," onthelinesof "LeRoi S'Amuse" or "Hernani." 
Vacquerie was also in permanent attendance on the 
master, and as a Lord Chamberlain regulated the 
exits and entrances of visitors at the poet's private 
residence in the avenue which bears his name. This 
Vacquerie was one of the most persevering " first 
nighters " in Paris. Just like Francisque Sarcey, he 
attended "'premieres'' almost down to the night before 
he died. As in the case of Sarcey, too, he caught a 
chill on leaving the theatre, and in a few hours was in 
his coffin. 

The funeral of Victor Hugo was grandiose, like the 
poet's verse and prose. It was on the same scale as 
the previous funerals of Thiers and Gambetta. Traffic 
in Paris was suspended for a whole day. Seats were 
put up all along the route of the cortege from the Arc 
de Triomphe to the Pantheon. Troops were out, the 
Arc de Triomphe, Hugo's '' monceau de pierres" was 
draped in black, tokens of mourning were displayed 
outside the Government buildings, and there was a 
band of sable drapery across the front of the Cathedral 
of Notre Dame, although the poet was buried without 
Church rites. Half Paris turned out in evening dress 
— the official garb — on the day of the funeral, and the 
bands of men in white shirts and ties, shiny tall hats, 
and clawhammer coats, following the bier, were innu- 
merable. Many of these people, it is safe to say, had 
never read a line of Hugo's prose or poetry. They only 
knew him as the politician, the exile who had suffered 
under the Second Empire, and who was one of the 
supporters of the new regime which was to give 
liberty, equality, and fraternity. They accordingly 
mustered in their thousands, displayed their banners. 




Louis Pasteur 



To face p. 67. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 67 

and marched to the Pantheon, there to see the 
'^ proscrif put to rest among the great men of the 
country. For my part, I was very glad when Victor 
Hugo's funeral was over ; and I had to undergo so 
much fatigue and annoyance on the occasion that I 
have never since read a line of the poet's works, 
except once when, at Naples, I chanced to find his fine 
lines on that delightful place, " aux bords embaumes 
ou le printemps s'arrete." 

The next event of any importance with which I was 
in touch was the discovery of a cure for hydrophobia by 
Louis Pasteur. This caused a great stir in England, 
and, as usual, we had a whip from Mr. J. M. Le Sage, 
informing us that Mr. Lawson would like somebody 
to go from the Paris office to see M. Pasteur in his 
laboratory. The Daily Telegraph was in advance 
then, as well as on other occasions of interest. I was 
deputed to go to M. Pasteur's with Dr. De Lacy 
Evans, who had brought over with him a London 
artisan who had been bitten by a mad dog. M. Pasteur 
received us with the utmost affability at his laboratory 
attached to the Normal School in the Rue d'Ulm. 

When I went there with Dr. De Lacy Evans and 
the English patient we found the place crowded with 
people. Prominent among these were half a dozen 
Russian peasants who had been mauled by wolves, 
and were sent for treatment to the Pasteur Institute. 
Strictly speaking, the Pasteur Institute was a subse- 
quent foundation, but the place in the Rue d'Ulm 
was known by that name until the newer and larger 
establishment was founded in a neighbouring district. 
Most of the people whom I saw awaiting inoculation 
at Pasteur's were of the poorest category. Pasteur 



68 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

himself was present at all the inoculations. These he 
never made himself, not being, as he was careful to 
assure us, a doctor of medicine, but only a chemist. 
The inoculations or injections were made accordingly 
by a qualified medical man under the supervision of 
the discoverer of the vaccine. After the inoculations 
M. Pasteur sent us into the laboratory, where we saw 
the rabbits put under chloroform and injected with the 
sort of bouillon from which the serum was made. 
This was a painful sight, and M. Pasteur had to 
answer afterwards the objections of the anti-vivi- 
sectionists, who used to accuse him of cruelty. 

Louis Pasteur, who made the poor dumb creatures 
suffer for the benefit of humanity, was one of the 
most urbane men whom it has been my fortune to 
meet. I saw him on several occasions at the Rue 
d'Ulm, and he usually talked about English politics, 
being an especial admirer of Mr. Gladstone, whose 
public career he followed with great interest. M. 
Pasteur also asked me many questions about Home 
Rule for Ireland, and about the Irish Party and its 
leader, Mr. Parnell, who was at that time prominent, 
and whose movements were as much discussed on the 
Continent by Frenchmen, Germans, and Italians as 
they were in Great Britain and Ireland. 

Parnell was especially known in Paris, whither he 
had come to place some of the funds of his party in 
the bank of the Messrs. Munro. He was piloted 
through Paris by Patrick Egan, by Mr. James 
O'Kelly, who had once served in the French Foreign 
Legion, and by Henri Rochefort. The Irish leader 
was lionised for some weeks in Paris, and his presence 
there had served to lend interest to his cause. M. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 69 

Pasteur, as I judged from my conversations with him, 
regarded Parnell in the hght of an O'Connell, for 
whom, as a CathoHc, he had a sincere admiration. 

After my first meeting with M. Pasteur in the Rue 
d'Ulm, the usual long report of the event appeared 
in the Telegraph. It seemed as if the editor of that 
great paper had " discovered " the savant, and there 
was a rush of other newspaper correspondents to see 
the wonder-worker of the Rue d'Ulm. M. Pasteur's 
laboratory was invaded day by day by dozens of 
journalists. Two or three of these tried to monopolise 
the celebrity, and to make out that only what they 
recorded about him was the real truth. Then those 
who found that they were not the first in the field 
began to challenge the value and the efficacy of the 
Pasteur treatment in cases of hydrophobia, and force 
was lent to the challenge owing to the deaths of some 
of the poor persons who had been inoculated with the 
serum. Neither this nor the attacks of the anti-vivi- 
sectionists damaged the reputation of M. Pasteur, who 
has taken a place among the benefactors of humanity. 
He received all the honours that his country could 
give, his work was appreciated and applauded abroad 
as well as at home, and his death caused universal 
regret. 

Not long after my first meeting with M. Pasteur in 
the Rue d'Ulm, I was brought very close to M. 
Clemenceau, who now, in his old age, is regarded as 
the strongest statesman of the time. I used to hear 
him in the Chamber of Deputies tearing Jules Ferry's 
policy to pieces in his usual trenchant and sardonic 
way. By a mere chance I came face to face with him 
in his editorial snuggery at the offices of the Justice, in 



70 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

the Rue Montmartre. That paper, notable only for 
the leading articles of M. Clemenceau and M. Pelletan, 
has been many years dead. It never had any news, 
and no one ever saw anybody connected with it except 
the two writers whom I have just mentioned. Camille 
Pelletan, son of a famous father, Eugene Pelletan, 
who was one of the most strenuous adversaries of the 
Second Empire, was then known as the "lieutenant of 
M. Clemenceau." He played second fiddle to his 
leader in the Chamber and in the columns of the 
ponderous and gloomy Jttstice. Pelletan has nearly 
equalled his old leader since then, and was the most 
entertaining Minister of Marine that the world has 
ever beheld. He was at one time currently reported 
to be under the rigid rule of an exacting mistress, but 
he surprised everybody by marrying a simple and 
unsophisticated school-teacher while he was head of 
the Naval Department. The couple spent their honey- 
moon cruising about the Mediterranean on a battleship, 
which Pelletan, in his capacity as Minister, borrowed 
from the State, and was duly denounced by his enemies 
for having done so. 

Both M. Clemenceau and M. Pelletan started a 
ferocious campaign in the Justice in 1887, when 
President Grevy wanted to form the Rouvier- 
Fallieres Cabinet with the co-operation of Baron 
de Mackau, the Due de La Rochefoucauld, and 
other Conservatives, who were to receive com- 
pensation for their services. The whirligig of time 
has brought about a notable change, for in 1906 
Messrs. Pelletan and Clemenceau supported the 
Rouvier Cabinet and backed the candidature of 
M. Fallieres for the Presidency of the Republic. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 71 

Before I record my impressions of M. Clemenceau 
on coming into close quarters with him for the first 
time, I must transcribe a brief passage concerning 
him when he was editor of the Justice first, and 
of the Aurore afterwards. It is from that im- 
petuous writer, M. Urbain Gohier, once a Royahst, 
then an ardent defender of Alfred Dreyfus, and since 
an independent, who lashes ferociously the men with 
whom he co-operated in the tempestuous campaign 
for the liberation of the prisoner of Devil's Island. 
M. Urbain Gohier had far better opportunities of 
knowing M. Clemenceau than I or any other foreign 
correspondent in Paris, including even the clever and 
indefatigable Mrs. Emily Crawford. 

Says Gohier : " The first time that I saw M. 
Clemenceau closely was in the offices of the Justice 
one evening when there was a financial crisis. I 
found myself in a dark hole where a lot of shady- 
looking persons were whispering to one another 
mysteriously. From a neighbouring room I could 
hear sounds of voices. I imagined myself to be 
in the house of Bancal while Fualdes was having 
his throat cut. I subsequently learned how far my 
sinister impression was just. ..." I cannot give 
any more of M. Gohier's passage at this point, as 
he hints darkly at a case of assassination of the 
mediaeval kind. Of M. Clemenceau at the Aurore, 
Gohier says : "At the Aurore, where I was the 
neighbour of M. Clemenceau, his personality in- 
terested me deeply. With all his vices, he was very 
superior to the crowd of mob-orators and back-of- 
the-shop lot. Nothing equals his haughtiness, 
his audacity, the cynicism of his ingratitude, and 



72 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

his egotism. He was doing work for Dreyfus. I 
was trying to utilise circumstances and to bring on 
the necessary revolution. We might have lived 
side by side indefinitely, but money began to fail. 
M. Clemenceau walked out of the office within the 
twenty-four hours rather than agree to any reduction 
of his fees, and the other 'copy merchants' walked 
out after him." This expression '' marc hands de 
copie'' is also sometimes '' marc hands de prosed 

My first impressions of M. Clemenceau were not 
of the sinister cast. I was introduced to the office 
of the Justice by Mr. Randall Cremer, M.P., who 
was over in Paris with Mr. Thomas Burt and others 
of the Peace Arbitration Society. I had been 
attending their meetings in the Tivoli - Vauxhall, 
a music and dancing saloon near the Place de la 
Republique. Mr. Cremer told me that he and his 
friends were going to meet M. Clemenceau in his 
editorial offices, and he asked me to accompany 
them. It was on a Sunday evening, about half-past 
ten o'clock. The interior of the bureaux was un- 
doubtedly dark, as M. Gohier says, but I have 
seen darker and more sinister-looking newspaper 
offices in France and England. 

On ascending the stairs I met Mr. Cremer, who 
ushered me into M. Clemenceau*s sanctum. The 
great man had not yet arrived from the country, 
where he had been enjoying what is known in the 
twentieth century as a "week-end." Inside the 
sanctum were Mr. Cremer's colleagues of the Peace 
Arbitration Society and on a lounge sat Mrs. Emily 
Crawford, then acting, with her husband, for the 
Daily News, 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 73 

M. Clemenceau was just as I had seen him before 
in the Chamber of Deputies — alert, dapper always, but 
not aggressive. He put down his cigar on the table 
at which he sat, and listened while Mr. Cremer spoke 
a few words about the Peace Arbitration Society, its 
objects, and its prospects. M. Clemenceau then stood 
up and replied to Mr. Cremer in English such as I 
have heard very few Frenchmen command. Although 
he must have learned it when he was in New York, 
living chiefly by giving lessons in French, there was 
no trace of the American accent. Every word came 
out clearly, every sentence told. M. Clemenceau 
was at heart with the peacemakers, but he reminded 
Mr. Cremer and his colleagues that France had to 
keep her frontiers in a state of defence, and that a 
standing army was as necessary for her as the bread 
of life for her sons. He said practically the same 
thing at a provincial banquet only recently in 1906. 

After his excellent speech in English, the dapper 
man with the cannon-ball head and the brush-like 
moustache turning grey sat down and chatted 
amiably with those around him. I came away from 
the Justice offices most favourably impressed by 
the Radical leader, his excellent English, which was 
a surprise to me, ringing in my ears. And now, M. 
Clemenceau — the homme sinistre of the Royalists, 
the Vendean of the nouveau bocage, whose father 
was a Jacobin and was arrested at the time of Louis 
Napoleon's coup cC^tat ; the former disciple of Blanqui, 
whose motto was " Ni Dieu, ni maitre " ; the man 
who saluted Gambetta as the rising hope of Re- 
publicanism, and afterwards abandoned and attacked 
him ; who discovered General Boulanger, and who 



74 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

was for years under a cloud owing to his connection 
with Cornelius Herz — is Prime Minister of France, 
with General Picquart, the strenuous champion of 
M. Dreyfus, as his War Minister. 

The event coincided with the partial conquest of 
the air by M. Santos Dumont, the Brazilian aeronaut, 
who won the Archdeacon prize. The Brazilian may 
fly higher still, and so may M. Clemenceau. If this 
latter arriviste retains his robust health he may 
reach the Elys6e, like Thiers, Casimir-Perier, Loubet, 
and Fallieres, who were also Presidents of the 
Council. M. Clemenceau has seen exactly forty- 
two Cabinets formed and overturned since the 4th 
of September, 1870. He overturned not a few of 
these Cabinets himself, and it has to be seen now 
how long he will be able, or be allowed, to last. He 
has a formidable rival in M. Jaures. The two had 
an oratorical duel in the Chamber over the strikes 
in June, 1906. M. Clemenceau's sentences clicked, 
as always, like pistols and cut like rapiers. M. Jaures 
was not so rhetorical, florid, and flamboyant as usual. 
He was easily beaten, however, by his calm, scientific, 
and satirical opponent, and he will not forget it. 
Other and more serious opponents than M. Jaures 
are in waiting, and M. Clemenceau will need all 
his ability as a statesman to face them. For these, 
trenchant satire, acid aphorisms, biting epigrams, and 
those verbal " darts flung by a dexterous and ever- 
youthful hand," as M. Jaures said in the debate just 
referred to, will not suffice. The new French Presi- 
dent of the Council must use against his more 
formidable adversaries much stronger and more effec- 
tive weapons. Why, it may well be asked, was not 




Photo] 



Jkan Jaukes. 



[P'l- i Picture Agency 



To face p. 74. 



FORTY YEARS OP PARIS 75 

this commanding man, this master of phrases such 
as the French love, this versatile artist, a Minister 
before 1906? Why had he to wait not twenty, but 
twenty-five years (for he ought to have been in the 
" great Ministry " of Gambetta) for a portfoHo ? A 
reason given by his opponents is that M. Clemenceau 
was feared too much by his own party. He was too 
clever, too sharp in his criticism, too destructive for 
them. For twenty years he was the acknowledged 
leader of the Radical party in the Chamber of 
Deputies. But he did not in reality lead — he spoke. 
His mere words pulled down Cabinets. He uttered 
frequently commonplace ideas, such as were and are 
still current in Jacobin and Socialist circles, but he 
uttered them with an intensity and a vivacity of 
expression which was purely personal and has never 
been equalled. 

By this intense and terrible vigour of expression 
M. Clemenceau overturned Cabinets nearly every 
six months. Nobody could stand before the hissing 
of his verbal bullets. 

It is no wonder that his party feared this man who, 
like Lord Salisbury of old, is a " master of flouts 
and jibes and sneers." I well remember some eigh- 
teen or nineteen years back, when M. Clemenceau 
was at the zenith of his parliamentary omnipotence 
as a smasher of Cabinets, and when he became 
suddenly ill. He was for weeks in the hands of the 
doctors for sore throat, and his life was at one 
moment despaired of. He rallied and recovered, 
to the regret of his numerous enemies, and, it must 
be added, to the regret also of some members of 
his party. 



76 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

That party had allowed others to advance to the 
front before their able spokesman. They enabled 
nonentities to pass before him. It was not that they 
had what J. S. Mill said of the English, "a sottish 
and sneering depreciation of every demonstration 
above their own level." Nor would what Stendhal 
said, " Notre soci^t6 tend a aneantir tout ce qui s'^leve 
au dessus du mediocre," apply to them. But it is cer- 
tain that, as M. Clemenceau's Conservative adversaries 
say, the party allowed such a man as Charles Floquet 
to pass before him. 

Charles Floquet was sometimes compared to an 
English judge, owing to his personal appearance, 
and sometimes to Saint- Just. His oratory was as 
pompous and imposing as his aspect, but it was 
hollow and empty. He was a mediocrity who was 
persistently represented by his foes as "learned in 
Larousse." He had borrowed his erudition from 
the encyclopaedias, and nothing that he ever said 
told, except, perhaps, his famous apostrophe to 
General Boulanger : "At your age, monsieur, the 
first Napoleon was dead " — an obvious bull, but it 
hit hard. 

There was a time, however, when M. Clemenceau 
might have had a portfolio had he wished to take one. 
It was after the scrutin de liste ejections of Allain- 
Targe in 1885. M. de Freycinet became President 
of the Council when these elections were over, and 
in his Cabinet, formed on the 7th of January, 1886, 
General Boulanger, protected by his distant relative, 
M. Clemenceau, advanced to the front for the first 
time. M. de Freycinet was reproached at the time 
for neglecting to offer a portfolio to M. Clemenceau. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 77 

It was not M. de Freyclnet, however, who over- 
looked M. Clemenceau, but M. Jules Gr6vy, President 
of the Republic, who had also been afraid of 
Gambetta. 

M. Gr^vy, his son-in-law, M. Daniel Wilson, and 
their intimates at the Elysee, were among those 
who feared and hated M. Clemenceau. M. Gr^vy 
said at the time : '* Never shall that man (Clemenceau) 
enter the Elysee while I am alive." M. Grdvy meant 
by this that he would never have M. Clemenceau as 
a Minister attending Cabinet Councils in the national 
palace. 

Soon after that M. Gr6vy was obliged to have 
recourse, but in vain, to the prestige and the influ- 
ence of M. Clemenceau. It was when the scandals 
about the ** decorations " burst. M. Daniel Wilson 
was implicated in the ugly commercial transactions 
relative to the sale of the rosettes and ribbons of the 
Legion of Honour, with General Caffarel, a little 
weazened warrior whom one would think incapable 
of anything in the shape of a sharp " deal," to use a 
word applicable to the case. 

Leagued with M. Wilson and the General was an 
adventuress — Madame Limousin, a person just as 
commonplace and as out-of-date as General Caffarel. 
The two had admission to the Elysee, and Madame 
Limousin kept a veritable office for all sorts of pur- 
poses, but chiefly for the " decoration " traffic. 



CHAPTER VII 

More about M. Clemenceau — M. Clemenceau and M. Grevy — 
A smasher of Cabinets — The numerous Ministries of the 
Republic — Rise of General Boulanger — The present German 
Emperor and Boulanger — My meetings with the General — 
Events and episodes of the Boulangist period — Boulanger's 
flight and fall — His Boswell, Charles ChinchoUe — the king 
of reporters — Fictionist first, journalist after — The Opera 
Comique fire — Pranzini's execution — Close to the guillo- 
tine. 

TERRIFIED by the approach of the storm of 
scandal referred to in the preceding chapter, 
M. Grevy tried to rally around him all his old friends 
and supporters. It was the case of the rats deserting 
the sinking ship, however. All the former parasites 
and sycophants slunk away from the Elysee. Old 
friends were deaf and obdurate, even including the 
once faithful Madier de Montjau, a Republican of the 
old Jacobin type, and another of the florid orators of 
the Left. Madier de Montjau was deaf physically ; 
he was morally so when M. Grevy implored him to 
stand by. Not a single one of the President's old 
cronies would undertake to form a Cabinet, intended 
not so much to administer the affairs of the nation 
as to save M. Grevy from the storm whereof the 
ominous premonitory clouds were gathering over his 
head. 

78 




Photo'] 



Due DE Broglie. 



[Petit 



To face p. 79. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 79 

In his difficulty and despair M. Grevy sent for 
M. Clemenceau and asked him to form a Ministry. 
The Radical leader refused, to the surprise as well 
as to the disappointment of the tottering President. 
When M. Grevy went into retirement, he often spoke 
about this refusal of M. Clemenceau. He used to 
refer to him as '' ce Clemenceau^' and once remarked : 
" He (Clemenceau) actually refused to enter the 
Cabinet the first time that he was asked to do so. 
Why, he could have become President of the Council. 
He will never have such a chance again. The man 
will never be a Minister." 

Notwithstanding the prediction of " Pere Grevy," 
M. Clemenceau becomes not only President of the 
Council, but practically master of the destinies of 
France in 1906. This is so momentous an event 
that I cannot help recording here the list of the 
Cabinets of the Third Republic, or at least the names 
of their chiefs, none of whom equalled M, Clemenceau 
in ability, although among them were Thiers, the 
Due de Broglie, both of whom were great writers as 
well as statesmen, Gambetta, Ferry, and Jules Simon. 

The Republic began in September, 1870, as the 
Government of the National Defence, under General 
Trochu, who died at Tours in 1896. M. Thiers, 
nominated Chef du pouvoir ex^cutif diVid. then President 
of the Third Republic, was head of the Cabinet from 
February, 1871, to May, 1873, when he was succeeded 
by the Due de Broglie. The latter, twice President 
of the Council, was followed by General de Cissey in 
May, 1874. Then came M. Buffet, March, 1875; 
M. Dufaure, March, 1876; M. Jules Simon, 
December, 1876; the Due de Broglie again, 



80 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

May 17, 1877; General de Rochebouet, November, 
1877 ; M. Dufaure again, December, 1877 ; M. 
Waddington, February, 1879; M. de Freycinet, 
December, 1879; M. Jules Ferry, September, 1880; 
M. Gambetta, November, 1881 ; M. de Freycinet 
again, January, 1882; M. Duclerc, August, 1882; 
M. Fallieres, January, 1883; M. Jules Ferry again, 
February, 1883; M. Henri Brisson, April, 1885; 
M. de Freycinet again, January, 1886; M. Goblet, 
December, 1886; M. Maurice Rouvier, May, 1887; 
M. Tirard, December, 1887; M. Floquet, April, 
1888; M. Tirard again, February, 1889; M. de 
Freycinet again, March, 1890; M. Emile Loubet, 
February, 1892 ; M. Ribot, December, 1892 ; M. 
Ribot again, January, 1893; M. Dupuy, April, 1893; 
M. Casimir Perier, December, 1893; M- Dupuy 
again, May, 1894; M. Ribot again, January, 1895; 
M. L^on Bourgeois, November, 1895 J ^- Meline, 
April, 1896; M. Henri Brisson again, June, 1898; 
M. Dupuy again, November, 1898; M. Waldeck- 
Rousseau, June, 1899; M. Emile Combes, June, 
1902; M. Maurice Rouvier, January, 1905; M. 
Sarrien, March, 1906. M. Georges Clemenceau 
attains Cabinet rank in October, 1906, saluted as a 
sort of saviour by his adulators, and positively howled 
at as an agent of destruction to whom M. Fallieres 
has delivered up France, by his numerous and 
unrelenting adversaries. 

Leaving this remarkable man, I must now go on 
to the Boulangist period and its various and exciting 
episodes, of which I was generally a front-rank 
spectator. 

Ernest Boulanger, or " Emperor Ernest," as we 




J'hnto] 



Ai^jrAxD Fallieres 



fPiioii 



To face p. 80. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 81 

learn from the Holienlohe revelations he was called 
facetiously by Kaiser Wilhelm, was quite forgotten 
in his own country as well as elsewhere until the 
monumental " Denkwurdigkeiten," which have en- 
lightened and entertained the world, appeared in 
October, 1906. That jogged our memories, to use 
a common phrase, and the ghost of Boulanger 
glimmered through the voluminous pages of the 
Teutonic revealer of revelations who has been 
unjustly stigmatised as a mere " shirt-cuff recorder." 
Whether mere shirt-cuff jotter or recorder, Fiirst 
Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfiirst deserves 
immortality. Writes Chlodwig about Boulanger, in 
recording a family supper at the Schloss on the Spree 
on January 23, 1889: "The present Emperor, 
speaking of France, expressed the opinion that 
Boulanger would certainly succeed. He looked 
forward to seeing Boulanger pay a visit to Berlin 
as the ' Emperor Ernest.' He was going to appoint 
Radziwill and Lehndorff to be in attendance on him." 
Poor Emperor Ernest ! He never went to Berlin as 
a distinguished visitor, but ended his meteoric career 
in obloquy and in want. The man had actually been 
living on the revenues of his mistress, Madame de 
Bonnemain, for whom he discarded a prosaic but 
generous-hearted wife. Madame Boulanger, who had 
some private means, had offered to keep her husband 
in his old age, but he went on living with the other 
lady ; and when she died of phthisis in the gloomy 
Hotel Men^elle in Brussels, he shot himself over her 
grave in the cemetery of Ixelles in October, 1891. 

The recent revival of the gossip about differences 
between Bismarck and the present German Emperor, 

7 



82 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

and notably the Inkpot incident, recalls also an 
episode in the life of Boulanger. He was once at a 
Cabinet Council in the Elysee over which M. Gr6vy 
presided. Boulanger was War Minister, and had 
been storming about the Schnoebele incident and the 
doings of the Germans in Alsace and Lorraine, which 
nearly brought about a conflict in 1887. Boulanger 
was angered over the temporising and procrastinating 
attitude of the peace-loving M. Grevy, so he flung 
his portfolio on the ministerial table, overturning the 
contents of an inkpot on the spotless white waistcoat 
which the President was wearing, the season being 
the late spring. 

The first time that I saw Boulanger was in the 
Chamber of Deputies shortly after the formation of 
the Freycinet Cabinet of January 7, 1886. M. de 
Freycinet was constantly referred to at that time by 
the absurd phrase "the little white mouse of the 
Luxembourg." He was supposed to be full of low 
cunning, but the Germans thought a good deal of 
him, as we also learn from the " Denkwiirdigkeiten." 
It was current gossip that Boulanger was foisted on 
M. de Freycinet by M. Clemenceau, to whom the 
General was supposed to be related. That Cabinet 
included, besides the chief, M. de Freycinet, who 
was also Minister for Foreign Affairs, and General 
Boulanarer, who was at the War Office, M. Sarrien 
as Minister of the Interior, M. Sadi Carnot as 
Minister of Finance, M. Goblet as Minister of Public 
Instruction, M. Baihaut as Public Works Minister, 
while M. Lockroy held the portfolio of Commerce. 

Of these Ministers one, M. Carnot, was President 
of the Republic, helped to obliterate Boulanger, and 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 83 

fell a victim to the dagger of the assassin. Another, 
M. Baihaut, came to great grief, and was for a time 
in prison. Boulanger's fate was also tragic. The 
General, as I said, I first saw in the Chamber. He 
stood up to speak on some question concerning his 
department, and had hardly begun when a lunatic in 
the Strangers' Gallery fired a shot from a revolver. 
The bullet whizzed over Boulanger's head and went 
into the wall. The lunatic, who had adopted that 
lively method of calling attention to his alleged 
grievances against the Government, was hustled out 
of the gallery by the ushers and carried to the 
dungeons of the Palais Bourbon, whence he was sent 
to the central police station. 

Boulanger remained calm in the rostrum and 
continued his speech. He was then the wearer of 
an ordinary moustache, and had not assumed the 
dark-brown beard which subsequently gave him the 
appearance of that more celebrated and more historic 
character. General Prim. After that incident in the 
Chamber, comparatively little attention was paid to 
Boulanger until the memorable episode of July 14, 
1886. That day President Grevy drove out to 
the military review at Longchamps on the occasion 
of the national fete. The President and the Ministers 
were all in their sombre official dress. Boulanger, on 
the other hand, captivated the crowd by his smart, 
soldier-like appearance on a superb black charger, 
newly saddled and caparisoned for effect. He even 
had the audacity to make the charger prance and 
curvet before the central seat or " tribune " wherein 
sat the President, a crowd of ladies, including the wives 
of the ambassadors, and some foreigners of distinction. 



84 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Paris then went wild over Boulanger, and Paulus, 
the " comic lion " and wine-merchant, sang for months 
with immense success the stirring " En revenant de la 
Revue." The more sensational events of Boulanger's 
career have filled volumes. I propose, therefore, just 
to give succinctly the political events leading up to 
his exclusion from the Administration and to his fall. 

The beginning of the year 1887 was the most 
momentous in the history of the Third Republic. 
M. Goblet, who had succeeded M. de Freycinet in 
December, 1886, with Boulanger still at the War 
Office, was harried from all sides. Both he and 
Freycinet believed in Boulanger, who was hotly 
opposed by Ferry, Ribot, and Clemenceau. Then 
came the Schnoebele incident already referred to, 
an incident subsequently arranged on a juridical basis 
when M. Flourens was at the Foreign Office. In 
May, 1887, the whole of the Senate and four-fifths 
of the Chamber agreed that Boulanger was the danger 
and that he should be got rid of. M. Goblet was 
then defeated by an anti-Boulangist coalition, but 
on, ostensibly, a finance question, and a new Cabinet 
was formed by that remarkable emergency man, 
M. Maurice Rouvier. Into this combination entered 
Messrs. Fallieres, Spuller, Mazeau, and Barbey, all 
staunch friends of Jules Ferry. The War portfolio 
was given to the utterly obscure General Ferron, and 
M. Flourens, who had been with M. Goblet, was 
retained at the Foreign Office. 

Then followed the systematic and elaborately- 
planned crushing and obliterating of the common 
danger, Boulanger. In my experience in France I 
never saw anything so resolutely, and it may be 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 85 

said so ruthlessly, carried out as that, except the 
campaign conducted by M. Combes against the 
religious orders and congregations. I had no con- 
ception before the Boulangist time that Republicans 
could so resolutely throttle their Frankensteins. 

When Boulanger was ejected from the Cabinet, he 
was sent to a command at Clermont-Ferrand. I took 
a very active part in the demonstration in his favour 
at the Gare de Lyon on that occasion, and he 
remembered it afterwards. Thousands followed him 
into the station and wanted him to return to Paris 
and to march on the Elysee. I was foremost in a 
gang that tried to prevent him entering his carriage, 
and the circumstance caused me to be subsequently 
well watched and shadowed by the police. In fact, 
I had good reason to know that I was classed, if 
not as what is nowadays termed an "undesirable," 
at least as a dano;erous foreig-n resident. 

In my excitement at the time of Boulanger's 
departure I overlooked my work, and was guilty 
of one of the worst crimes that a journalist can 
commit. After I joined the crowd engaged in trying 
to get the General to return, I found with the others 
that he had disappeared in some mysterious manner. 
He had, in fact, what is familiarly called "given us 
the slip." Taking it for granted that the General 
had gone off in the train at the Gare de Lyon, I 
returned to town and wrote a despatch very late 
at night. In this I stated that General Boulanger, 
after a tremendous demonstration from his followers, 
had gone off to Clermont-Ferrand from the Lyons 
terminus. 

To my horror and consternation, I found on taking 



86 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

up the newspapers next morning that Boulanger 
had gone along the Hne as far as Charenton on the 
engine of the train. At Charenton he entered the 
carriage provided for him. The General was sub- 
sequently referred to by M. Mermeix, a follower of 
Boulanger to whom the name of Judas was applied 
after he wrote about the ephemeral hero for the 
Figaro, as the ** locomotive des d^cav^s." That engine 
trip of Boulanger's caused immense trepidation in 
the offices of the English newspapers on the night 
that it took place. There was notably great trouble 
and anxiety at the Standard office, where Mr. Hely 
Bowes and Mr. Farman were awaiting for long hours 
definite information as to whether Boulanger had 
gone to Clermont-Ferrand or remained hiding with 
Madame de Bonnemain in Paris. 

On the following day, a Saturday, I went out to 
lunch with Mr. and Mrs. Campbell Clarke, as they 
were then. They were staying in the well-known 
Pavilion Henri Quatre at Saint Germain-en- Laye. 
In the same hotel were at the time M. de Blowitz, 
M. Meilhac, the dramatist, and Albert Wolff, the 
once celebrated chronicler of the Figaro, a German 
born, who had a thorough mastery of the French 
language and wrote like a Parisian. M. de Blowitz 
was tremendously anxious to know all about Boulanger's 
departure from one who had been at the Gare de 
Lyon. I narrated to him what I had seen, and 
notably described an appeal for a drink made by 
the General as he was being mobbed by his followers. 
I said: *'// demandait a boire" and M. de Blowitz, 
who always wanted to utter something sprightly, 
remarked : ** Oui, tout comme Jisus Christ ^ 




General Boulanger. 



To face p. 87. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 87 

I did not smile at the joke, and I think that the 
great Httle man did not forgive me for my solemnity 
of countenance when he had condescended to provide 
me with a mot intended to promote jocularity. 

The next episode in Boulanger's career was his 
coming up to Paris clandestinely, and wearing goggles 
to throw the "shadowers" off the scent. This was 
an utterly foolish proceeding, for the make-up was 
easily seen through. After that the damaged hero 
made his entry into Parliament, but did not succeed 
there ; the old parliamentary hands were too much 
for him. Later on Jules Ferry tried to throw ridicule 
on him by calling him a "caf6 concert or music-hall 
Saint-Arnaud," and Boulanger had a duel with 
M. Floquet, which would have been one of the most 
hilarity-provoking events of the kind on record had 
he not, in his precipitate haste and inexplicable 
inexperience, allowed himself to be caught in the 
neck by the rapier of his adversary while the latter 
was actually sitting on some shrubs whereon he had 
fallen, and looking like a helpless porpoise. 

Boulanger's election as a deputy for Paris in 
January, 1889, was a very memorable affair. The 
Government backed M. Jacques, a distiller, and all the 
opponents of the General were in a condition of great 
anxiety. His followers held a meeting at Durand's, 
near the Madeleine, but nothing came of it. The 
General had not the least desire to march on the 
Elysde and to get locked up with his friends Paul 
D^roulede, Rochefort, Nacquet, and Laguerre. I 
had seen the General on the day before his election 
at his house in the Rue Dumont d'Urville. There 
was an enormous crowd of people waiting to mob 



88 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

him. He ordered that I was to be shown into his 
salon by his page-boy Joseph at once. He said : 
" You may telegraph to London that I am going to 
beat Jacques." I expressed some surprise at his 
resolute manner of uttering a prediction which might 
not be realised. " You need not fear," he said ; " I 
am going to have a total of 100,000, from which 
the Government will knock off 20,000 votes." I sent 
this to the Observer, and that paper, then edited by 
Mr. Dicey, published the prediction on Sunday, 
January 27, 1889. On the evening of that day 
the prediction was realised, Boulanger receiving 
nearly 82,000 votes. His popularity increased for a 
time, but the Government engaged that specially 
strong man, M. Constans, to crush him, and Boulanger 
fled to Brussels with Madame de Bonnemain. His 
party was financed by Commandant Heriot, of the 
Louvre shops, and also for a time by the Duchesse 
d'Uzes and other Royalists, although Boulanger was 
instrumental in having the Due d'Aumale and the 
Princes expelled from the army in 1886. The Duke 
retorted at the time by publishing a letter in which 
Boulanger had written years before : " Blessed be the 
day that sees me under your orders." This was when 
the Duke had a command in Algeria. The letter 
was used by the General's adversaries, who were 
wont to call the Boulangists satirically the " Bdnis- 
soit-lejour," or " Blessed be the day boys." 

The flight to Brussels which finished Boulanger's 
career reminds me of a remarkable man who died 
only very recently. That was Charles Chincholle, 
the " roi des reporters." Reams and reams have 
been written concerning Boulanger and the promi- 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 89 

nent Republicans to whom I have been referring 
in the preceding pages, but little has been printed 
about the marvellous Chlncholle. Let me say some- 
thing about him for the benefit of generations yet 
unborn. 

On the day of Boulanger's flight to Brussels my 
colleague, Mr. J. W. Ozanne, of the Daily Telegraph, 
and I were lunching at Bignon's, in the Avenue de 
rOp^ra, with Lord Burnham, then Mr. Edward 
Lawson, and with his daughter, now the Hon. Lady 
Hulse, and her husband. That was in April, 1889. 
Conversation at luncheon turned chiefly on Boulanger, 
and the Universal Exhibition of that year was also dis- 
cussed. It was arranged that Mr. Ozanne should call 
on General Boulanger and try to find out what he was 
going to do in view of the action taken by M. Constans, 
the strong man of the Government. I had to go on 
the same day to watch a case at the Palais de Justice. 
Mr. Ozanne saw the General, who blandly told him 
that he intended to remain in Paris and to await 
events. This was telegraphed to London, but in the 
meantime Boulanger had done what persons in 
difficulties in Paris are said to do when they vanish, 
that is, filer sur Bruxelles. Mr. Ozanne was thus 
baffled, but in the same boat with him was Charles 
Chincholle, who, as representative of the Figaro, had 
been the trusted confidant and the faithful Boswell of 
Boulanger. Chincholle was in trouble at the Figaro 
over that, I but he came up beaming again and resumed 
his position as the roi des reporters and the most 

^ Chincholle wrote in the Figaro that he was lunching with 
Boulanger at the time when, unknown to him, the brav^ 
General was across the frontier, and in Belgium. 



90 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

potent pressman in Paris. He was notably so in the 
days of Felix Faure and Emile Loubet. 

I was present with him once at a meeting of 
Boulangists at Saint-Mand6 while the General was 
laid up after his duel with M. Floquet. I had reason 
to remember that meeting, for on returning from it in 
a fly with a wonderful journalist named Negrau, 
known as the "little Portuguese" or the "little 
Lusitanian," who was always with me during the 
Boulangist period, I had a narrow escape from being 
clubbed to death by some of the secret service men, 
or moMckards, of M. Constans. Negrau said that the 
mouchards must have taken me for Boulanger, whom 
I remotely resembled then. My impression was that 
they recognised me as one of the people who tried to 
prevent Boulanger from leaving the Gare de Lyon, 
and that they resolved to "go " for me. Fortunately, 
the horse harnessed to the fly was a good one, and 
the driver soon had Negrau and myself out of the 
dangerous "sphere of influence" of the secret service 
men. One of these fellows levelled a blow at me 
which, if it had touched me, would have smashed 
my skull. The club fell on the back part, or rather 
the folded cover, of the fly, and I escaped. 

I heard afterwards that Chincholle had also some 
trouble with the mouchards, but they certainly could 
not have taken him for Boulanger. The last time I 
saw him was at Dunkirk, when the Tsar and the 
Tsaritsa landed there in September, 1901. He was 
then writing columns of copy for the Figaro. His 
death was very sudden. He rose up one morning 
complaining that he could not lift his right hand. In 
the evening he was a corpse, and the once powerful 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 91 

roi des reporters, who knew everybody and who 
went everywhere, was no more. He had killed 
himself by sheer writing, for he was not only an 
active journalist on daily work, but was the author 
of twenty-five novels. 

To see Chincolle at work for the Figaro, one would 
think that he was as enthusiastic as the youngest 
journalist just admitted to a profession which, in 
France as well as in England, is, notwithstanding 
what Mr. George Meredith says about *' Egyptian 
bondage," the goal of many a man's ambition. As 
a matter of fact, Chincholle writhed and suffered 
under his daily task. This is proved by what is 
recorded by M. Adolphe Brisson, son-in-law of 
Francisque Sarcey, in one of the newspapers for 
which he writes. 

M. Brisson met Chincholle at a place in the South 
where the fetes of the cadets of Gascony were taking 
place. It was only a few months before Chincholle's 
death. The two journalists were lunching with 
M. Mounet Sully, of the Com^die Frangaise, at the 
principal hotel in the place, and in the course of the 
meal M. Brisson, who had recently depreciated a 
novel by Chincholle, praised his letters in the Figaro 
about the fetes. To his intense astonishment, 
Chincholle turned round sharply and blurted out : 
" I don't want your compliments." Then the man 
arose, struck the table with his fist, and roared : " I 
am not a journalist ; I'm a novelist." M. Brisson 
and the tragedian, more surprised than ever, looked 
up at Chincholle, who denounced those who objected 
to accord him a place with the most famous fictionists. 
" I am an artist," he shouted, ''with the imagination 



92 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

of Dumas and the power of Balzac. I combine the 
observation of Flaubert with the colour and the 
movement of Eugene Sue. Journalism ! What is 
journalism? The hulks, the prison, the factory, 
where you earn your bread by mercenary labour. 
Journalism is the lowest degradation, the ignoble 
trade which one works at while despising it." 

Chincholle then rushed out of the place, shouting 
still that he was an artist and misunderstood. The 
unlucky man had obviously been taking more wine 
than was good for him under the sun of the South. 
M. Brisson's story was a revelation to all who had 
looked upon Chincholle as the most influential press- 
man of the time — the happy man who was received 
everywhere, and one who gloried in his profession. 

Once Chincholle was a candidate for the Municipal 
Council. His address was as follows : " Electors of 
the Tenth Arrondissement ! I am not going to make 
any promises. I am known. I have lived publicly 
for twenty-five years. I have been described as a 
worker, a zealous person, a bon enfant ! I propose to 
try to deserve these qualifications — particularly the 
last of them. I thank in advance those who shall 
vote for me, and the others will not be regarded by 
me as enemies." Then followed his signature and 
his titles as president and vice-president of various 
associations. The electors, however, rejected the 
journalist, who had been quite confident of success. 

Raoul Ponchon, the funniest versifier in Paris, who 
puts into the most entertaining rhyme ever printed 
events of the time, and the people connected with 
them, only saw in Chincholle the successful reporter 
who accompanied Presidents on their journeys. He 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 93 

referred to the great journalist's death in the following 
sly couplets : — 

Aujourd'hui, c'est ChinclioUe, 
Notre phenomenal 

Chincholle 
Disons : national. 

Nous I'entendons encore 
Du reportage tri- 

Colore 
Pousser le premier cri. 

Plus que le Protocole 
Necessaire a I'Etat 

Chincholle 
Devint un potentat. 

II promena sa pause 

Au moins pendant trente ans, 

En France 
Sous divers Presidents. 

Historien modeste, 
II racontait le fait 

Et geste 
Du President Loubet. 

This was the comic poet's epitaph for the departed 
pressman. Charles Chincholle was not sixty when 
he died. His closing years were embittered, not 
only by the balked ambition to which M. Brisson 
refers, but by domestic calamity, which tells on some 
men more than on others. He had a son on whom 
he doted, and who died while serving in the 
army. I saw the boy once in the uniform of a 
Cuirassier. He was with his father at a public 
function, and Chincholle introduced the young soldier 
to friends with great exultation. This youth, full 



94 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

of promise, died, and Chincholle was never the same 
again. There was another man in Paris who suffered 
a loss of the same sort. It was M. Charpentier, 
the publisher, who issued Zola's novels. M. Char- 
pentier also lost a son who contracted typhoid fever 
while serving as a soldier in a Northern garrison. 
After the boy's death the publisher retired from 
business. 

Those were stirring times for Paris Correspondents, 
the brave days of Boulanger. Nothing since has 
been so exciting. The sudden passing away of two 
Presidents ; the *' decoration " scandals ; the Panama 
bubble, ending in the death of Count Ferdinand de 
Lesseps, a most courteous gentleman to the last ; 
the Dreyfus Case ; the desperate struggle between 
Church and State, including the frantic but futile 
efforts of the Catholics to oppose the Government 
and its police — all these events and crises were 
less sensational than those of the Boulangist period. 
It was a time when nobody knew what would happen 
next. Boulanger nearly brought France to the 
brink of war with Germany. He filled the hearts 
of the revanchards with hopes, and at one time 
he seemed to have Paris and even France at his 
back. Then there were his escapades ; his expulsion 
from the army ; his sudden disappearances ; his 
political campaigns ; his lucky elections, which made 
the Government bring in the Floquet Bill for the 
substitution of scrutin de liste, for scrutin d' arrondisse- 
ment, thus making the return of a candidate for 
Parliament more difficult ; his liaison with Marguerite 
de Bonnemain, a lady of title, of whom some of the 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 95 

patriots said that she was paid by Constans to bring 
their man to grief; his trial for conspiracy against 
the State in conjunction with Count Dillon and 
Henri Rochefort ; his exile in Jersey, and his melo- 
dramatic end at Brussels in September, 1891. 

Attempts have been made to show that all the 
excitement caused by Boulanger was manufactured. 
This is not quite true. There were moments when 
the enthusiasm for him was real, when he had the 
people with him, and when he did not need the 
factitious aid of Napoleon Hayard, the so-called 
empereur des came lots. Boulanger did not take 
advantage of his opportunities. He lost his moment, 
or allowed it to slip from him through indolence, 
love of pleasure, and it must be added, fear. He 
was afraid of the Government, and the Government 
was on several occasions in mortal terror of him, 
but it succeeded in stamping him out. 

Sandwiched between the various acts of the 
Boulangist tragedy-comedy which was played from 
1886 to 1 89 1, there were some other events which 
called for my attention owing to their public interest 
or their sensational character. 

One evening in May, 1886, I was sitting in the 
Daily Telegraph office, then in the Place de I'Opdra, 
clearing off with Mr. Ozanne the ordinary budget 
of the day. Nothing remarkable had been happen- 
ing just then. Suddenly the door of the bureatc 
opened and in burst the office messenger, an old 
fireman or pompier, breathless with excitement, and 
shouting that the Op^ra Comique was on fire. 

We communicated the news to Campbell Clarke 
and went on his balcony, whence we saw the smoke 



96 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

and flames ascending from the burning building. I 
rushed out and reached the Opera Comique in a 
few moments. I tried to get in, but was stopped by 
M. Damala, the Greek actor whom Madame Sarah 
Bernhardt married. He was then acting as a sort 
of affable policeman, the real policemen being at 
the time in temporary disorder. M. Damala begged 
of me to retreat, as it would not only be dangerous 
to enter the doomed place, but the presence of 
non-rescuers there would hamper the work of the 
firemen. 

Accordingly I went to a cafe and saw the calcined 
bodies of those who had been burned carried out of 
the house to the police station in the Rue de Riche- 
lieu, where they were deposited temporarily. Among 
those burned or asphyxiated were some girls of the 
corps de ballet. All the vocalists escaped, and so 
did the men of the orchestra. A tenor, then very 
popular, but who was heard of very little after the 
fire, was the first to escape from the house. He had 
always in his dressing-room a rope ladder to be 
used in case of fire. He used it to some advantage 
on that night and got out of the zone of danger, 
but he subsequently returned to assist in the rescue 
work. 

Many persons had narrow escapes, notably Mr. 
Sewell, an English solicitor in Paris, whose hair was 
singed. I heard of another case of an Englishman 
who was at the Opera Comique on the night of 
the disaster with a lady who was not his wife, 
or, as the French say, not his Ugitime. The 
man escaped, the lady was lost, and the real Ugi- 
time over in London was surprised to hear that 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 97 

she — Mrs. Blank — had been burned in the Opera 
Comique fire, and that her husband escaped. 

There was a silly popular report spread in Paris 
soon after the disaster to the effect that the fire 
was due to the American vocalist, Mademoiselle 
Marie Van Zandt, who wanted revenge for her treat- 
ment by her former admirers and adorers after she 
broke down on the stage of the Op^ra Comique. 
For several years this lady had been the idol of the 
students, shopboys and clerks of Paris. These used 
to throng to hear her sing, and raved about her 
dazzling beauty and her celestial voice. Then she 
began to make enemies among the French, and 
especially among those of her own profession. She 
played into the hands of her foes by being in a 
strange condition one night as she went on the stage. 
She broke down in her part and had to be led back 
to her dressing-room. 

An American Correspondent cabled that night 
to New York that Mademoiselle Van Zandt had 
appeared as Rosine in the " Barber of Seville " 
at the Opera Comique in a state of, let us say, exalta- 
tion. This was denied, and after a rest the lady 
returned to the stage, but only to be hissed. Her 
former admirers and adorers had joined forces with 
her deadly foes and she was hissed and hooted. 
There were Van Zandt riots in the streets, and the 
police had to interfere. The upshot was that the 
lady left the Opera Comique, where she had so long 
been a prime favourite and an undoubted attrac- 
tion. The last time that I heard her sing was at 
a matinde organised for the relief of the families 
of the ballet-dancers and some others who were lost 

8 



98 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

in the fire. The matinde was organised by the 
Chief Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph in his 
residential rooms in the Place de I'Opera. Some of 
the best artists in Paris took part in the affair, and 
Mademoiselle Van Zandt sang appropriately " Parigi, 
O cara." Shortly afterwards she left her once beloved 
Paris for the banks of the Neva, and became for 
a time a favourite with the Russians. 

Another interlude among the political events of 
the period was the crime of Pranzini, the Italian. 
This excited people more than other affairs of 
the kind since Troppmann's days. Pranzini mur- 
dered a demi-mondaine, Madame de Montille, alias 
Maria Regnault, in her rooms in the Rue Montaigne, 
quite close to the Presidential Palace of the Elys6e. 
He cut her throat, and served in the same way her 
maid of all work and that person's child. 

Pranzini had been preceded by another Italian 
named Prado, who, however, murdered only one 
person, Marie Aguetant, also a demi-mondaine, living 
in the Rue Caumartin, not far from the Opdra. I saw 
Pranzini guillotined on a summer morning in 1887, 
and had some trouble in obtaining leave to view 
the execution as I had no police permit at the time, 
documents of the sort being only given to Chief 
Correspondents. This made my work more difficult 
to accomplish, but I was determined to see the 
execution, especially as I had paid out of my own 
pocket a man living near the prison of La Roquette, 
who was to inform me by letter or telegram when 
the affair was likely to take place. There had been 
a good deal of hesitation about the fate of Pranzini 
on the part of President Grdvy, and it was thought 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 99 

that with his accustomed clemency he would 
commute the man's sentence. 

By dint of persuasion, and by explainino- the 
awkward difficulties of my position, I succeeded in 
inducing the Chief of the Municipal Police to pass 
me into the place where Pranzini was to be guillo- 
tined — that is to say, in front of La Roquette prison. 
There I found waiting two other Correspondents of 
London papers and an American journalist. 

We saw old Deibler, now departed, come on the 
scene with his vehicles and his men towards four 
o'clock in the morninof. Soon afterwards the sfuillo- 
tine did its work, and I shall never forget the short, 
stifled shriek of terror that broke the stillness of the 
morning as the knife fell. 

L Of C 



CHAPTER VIII 

President Carnot's election — Paul Deroulede and the patriots 
— Hatred of Ferry — M, Clemenceau's "outsider" — The 
Marriage a Failure Question — My talks with Zola, Dumas 
and others — Emile Zola at home — M. Sardou's anger — 
M. Ludovic Halevy's letter — War clouds — Rupture with 
Rome foreshadowed — The Floquet programme of 1888. 

AFTER the agitation caused by General Boulanger 
and the fall of M. Jules Gr6vy, there was that 
brought about by the election of President Carnot. 
Saturday, the 3rd of December, 1887, was a very- 
momentous day from the point of view of professional 
agitators and alarmists. On that day the members of 
both Houses went to Versailles to elect a successor 
to M. Gr^vy. Paris was in an excited condition, 
Paul Deroulede and his patriots were going about 
threatening a revolution if, as was supposed, M. Jules 
Ferry, the friend of Bismarck and the opponent of the 
revanche, obtained the succession of " Pere Gr6vy." 
The whole city was full of troops and there was an 
unruly mob on the Place de la Concorde. The crowd 
wanted to get towards the Chamber of Deputies, and 
occasionally threw stones at the Municipal Guards. 
That was the only approach to a conflict that I could 
see on the eventful Saturday of September 3, 1887. 

The threats of the patriots had some influence at 

100 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 101 

Versailles, and at the instance of M. Clemenceau, 
then chief wire-puller of political marionettes, Jules 
Ferry was shelved, and an "outsider," M. Sadi 
Carnot, was elected fourth President of the Republic. 
The word '* outsider " was used by M. Clemenceau on 
the occasion, and President Carnot remembered it, 
although he owed his election to the Radical leader 
and wire-puller. 

As soon as M. Carnot was at the Elys^e those 
around him set the Press to work to sound his praises. 
The term " outsider " was soon forgotten, and the 
Government papers published columns about the 
President's grandfather, Carnot the "organiser of 
victory " during the First Republic. 

I first saw President Carnot when he was Finance 
Minister in the Freycinet Cabinet of 1886, with 
General Boulanger, whom he was afterwards to assist 
others in crushing as War Minister. I next saw him 
soon after his election, when he was inspecting the 
works of the Exhibition of 1889 on the Champ de 
Mars. During that inspection the new President 
spoke to everybody around him quite freely, and even 
tried to ingratiate himself with the workmen who were 
employed by the Exhibition Commissioners. Later 
on the President was caricatured as an automaton, and 
hawkers sold on the boulevards figures representing 
his rigid, mathematical manner of taking off his hat and 
bowing to official or other crowds. This indignity had 
been spared to M. Grevy, who was only ridiculed by 
lampoons, and by the squib sold on the boulevards 
about the misfortune of having a son-in-law, an 
allusion to the trafficking of M. Daniel Wilson. M. 
Carnot's successor for a brief period, M. Casimir- 



102 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Perler, was also caricatured by pictures, being repre- 
sented as a hideous bull-dog. When the Emperor 
William the First of Germany died in March, 1888, 
the boulevard caricaturists sent out his mock " last will 
and testament." Nobody ever interferes with these 
propagators of squibs and caricatures, who are allowed 
in Paris a latitude which would not be granted to them 
for one moment in Berlin, or, indeed, in any other 
European capital. We are far, assuredly, from the 
days when the artist Phillippon was prosecuted for 
drawing His Majesty King Louis Philippe as a pear. 

In this year 1888, soon after the duel between 
General Boulanger and M. Charles Floquet, I was 
deputed by the editor of the Daily Telegraph to 
obtain the views of prominent Frenchmen on the 
peculiar question "Is Marriage a Failure } " raised by 
Mrs. Mona Caird. It was suggested that I should 
first see Emile Zola, as his name was so well known. 
The whole of the correspondence on this question has 
been published in book form, so that there is no need 
to return to it. For me the chief interest of it lay in 
my first meeting with Zola. 

When I settled in Paris in the beginning of the 
eighties, Zola was at the zenith of his celebrity, or 
notoriety, as a writer. He was reported to be receiving 
fabulous sums for his output of fiction, and he was said 
by some journalists to be developing megalomania. 
These gentlemen also wrote that he was morose and 
cantankerous owing to dyspeptic troubles. I remem- 
bered all this when I was requested to see Zola, and 
I was anxious also about the reception which he might 
give me, as I was told by A. D. Vandam, the enter- 
taining author of " The Englishman in Paris," that the 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 103 

novelist was a "crusty customer." Vandam was at 
that time Correspondent of the Globe in Paris. 

On meeting Zola for the first time, I found him to 
be a most courteous gentleman. The portraits of the 
creator of the Rougon-Macquart family, which I had 
seen, belied the original. In them Zola was repre- 
sented as the morose and cantankerous person which 
some of the journalists reported him to be. To me, 
when I saw him at Medan, he was all smiles and 
kindness. He spent the greater part of a fine summer 
afternoon talking to me about marriage and other 
questions. The burthen of his talk was that not only 
marriage but other antique institutions were failures. 

In the tragedy of things there is nothing so 
tremendous as the career and the ending of Emile 
Zola. This man, who had written many powerful and 
dramatic pages, would furnish from his own life-history 
abundant material for a tragedy or a romance. He 
rises from the position of an ill-paid clerk at a book- 
seller's to be the most popular and the most prosperous 
of French novelists. He becomes chief of a school and 
gathers around him a galaxy of young talent — Guy 
de Maupassant, J. K. Huysmans, Ceard, and the 
others. After having been condemned in England for 
his over-realism he is received triumphantly in London 
by the Institute of Journalists. Then we have his 
connection with the Dreyfus Case, his letter ''f accuse' 
flung in the face of the military judges, his trials at 
Paris and at Versailles, his flight to London, and his 
return home to the Rue de Bruxelles, there to die 
surrounded by impenetrable mystery. 

The last time that I talked to Zola was on his return 
from his triumph in London. Before he crossed the 



104 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Channel for the first time in his life, I had written to 
him asking if he would say something about England 
and the English ere he left Paris. He was then in 
his summer quarters and promptly answered me as 
follows : — 

"Medan, Sept. 9, 1893. 

" Monsieur et cher Confrere, — Je ne veux pas 
encore vous repondre non ; mais je crains bien que 
ma paresse ne I'emporte. Voulez-vous attendre mon 
retour de Londres? Vous viendrez me voir un soir 
a Paris, 21 bis, rue de Bruxelles, vers six heures, et 
je vous donnerai ma reponse definitive. 

" Cordialement, 

" Emile Zola." 

That was the last letter which I had from Zola. I 
saw him in his Paris house when he returned from 
London, and had a long talk over his experiences in 
the British capital. London chiefly impressed him 
by its enormous size. He joked a little about 
Francisque Sarcey, who " trotted his great paunch over 
Whitechapel, which was shown to him by two police- 
men." Sarcey, I believe, had been in London to 
lecture, before Zola's trip to England at the invitation 
of the Institute of Journalists. The novelist likewise 
referred to the public-houses or gin-palaces, and to the 
miles of little dwellings which he had seen in the 
suburbs of the English metropolis. 

When I went to see Zola at M^dan in order to 
get his views on the question "Is Marriage a Failure } " 
I brought away impressions of his surroundings 
and wrote about them. After these impressions had 
appeared in print, they caused a rush to Medan on 
the part of numerous ladies as well as gentlemen 




Alexandre Dumas, Fils. 



To face p. 104. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 105 

of the Press. The house was besieged for weeks. 
One of the scribes who was received by the '* hermit 
of Medan," as some people called Zola then, tried 
to go over my ground and painted in details of 
furniture which I had overlooked or not seen. 
Another laid stress on having seen Madame Zola, to 
whom I had not referred at all. I happen to have 
in my possession a letter from Madame Zola, written 
to me after her husband's death, and in which she 
accorded me full liberty to publish a special portrait 
of him, and also drawings of the property at Mddan, 
in an American publication. 

After having seen Zola on the question raised by 
Mrs. Caird, I went to Alexandre Dumas fils. He 
was then at Le Puys, near Dieppe, in the little villa 
where his father had died. Dumas also received me 
very courteously, but he did not go out of his way 
as Zola did to make himself agreeable. 

Next, I went out to Marly in order to see Victorien 
Sardou. That cunning forger of popular plays and 
ad captandum dramas was too busy to receive me. 
He had an appointment with an American impresario, 
and as I was pressing for a few moments of conversa- 
tion only, he rushed out of his room and almost spat 
at me. We both lost our tempers on this occasion, 
and behaved badly. He called me a "hack," and 
I retorted with the old-time retort that he was no 
gentleman, and that, at any rate, I was a better 
specimen of a gentleman than he. And all this 
was over a trivial matter. I believed at the time 
that M. Sardou was angry at the question "Is 
Marriage a Failure ? " He took it too seriously, un- 
like Zola, Dumas, Ludovic Hal6vy, and the others, 



106 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

even including Abbe Le Rebours, Vicar of the 
Madeleine, whom I had seen on the subject. I think 
M. Sardou, however, had no reason to think marriage 
a failure in his own case. He has had a Qrood deal of 
agreeable experience of the matrimonial life. Hard 
work, current events, and a little philosophy soon 
made me forget this disastrous meeting with Sardou, 
which was mentioned, but with caution, in one 
newspaper published in Paris. I learned after- 
wards that Sardou had many quarrels of the sort, 
and that he usually made a peace-offering in the 
shape of an invitation to luncheon. He did not 
invite me to luncheon, but he sent me, some years 
after our tempestuous meeting, an invitation in his 
own handwriting to attend the dress rehearsal of 
his play '' Madame Sans-Gene," at the Vaudeville. 
This was a great honour coming from the dis- 
tinguished dramatist, who, as I was told not very 
long ago, regretted that there was a misunderstanding 
between us when I tried to see him at Marly in 
August, 1888. 

Alexandre Dumas fils, whom I saw at Dieppe, 
as already related, sent me a four-page letter on the 
subject of " Marriage a Failure." It was full of 
his worldly-wise philosophy, and was eminently 
characteristic of the man who was the most 
infinitely painstaking celebrity ever known. Not- 
withstanding his work for the stage, over which he 
"bled himself white," he was always writing prefaces 
for the books of other people, or letters to those who 
harassed him for introductions to publishers, to 
managers of theatres, and to editors of newspapers. 
One thinor could be said of Dumas — he was not 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 107 

jealous of those who succeeded in his own line. 
Moreover, he had helped many a dramatist to a 
first hearing-. He was fond of saying sharp things 
about people, and his mots often stung. But he was 
full of the milk of human kindness, and would never 
deliberately injure anybody. In the matter of 
jealousy, so common among dramatists, novelists, 
and journalists, the younger Dumas resembled a 
man of a different literary type — Georges Ohnet, 
the prolific novelist. M. Ohnet has made a good 
deal of money by his books. He has been in the 
front rank of "popular" authors for over a quarter 
of a century, and still commands an audience. He, 
too, has helped many a struggler, and remarked 
some years ago, when he was asked about a rising 
author, that he would stand in nobody's way, 
although in doing so he might have to tirer contre 
ma propre troupe. 

M. Ludovic Halevy wrote me also a very charac- 
teristic letter on the " Marriage a Failure " question, 
and as it was not published, I give it here as a 
thoroughly original document. The dramatist, as 
will be seen, is facetious, as becomes one who wrote 
in collaboration with Henri Meilhac : — 

"Dieppe, Se'^t. 3, 1888. 

"■ Cher Monsieur, — Permettez moi de me recuser. 
Ce sont la pour moi de trop s^rieuses et trop 
redoutables questions. Mais pourquoi ne vous etes 
vous pas adresse tout d'abord au mari de Madame 
Mona Caird.^ Aucun t^moignage n'aurait et6 plus 
pr^cieux a recueillir. 

" Veuillez agreer, Cher Monsieur, I'expression 
de mes meilleurs sentiments, 

•' Ludovic Halevy." 



108 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Taking a little freedom with the name of the 
gentleman alluded to in M. Halevy's letter, for 
which I hope forgiveness in the circumstances of 
the case, I wrote back to the dramatist : — 

"Cher et Illustre Maitre, — Je suis infiniment 
reconnaissant de votre lettre dont le contenu a 6t6 
communique au R6dacteur-en-chef du Daily Tele- 
graph, 

" II parait que I'article de Madame Caird a etd 
imprim6 avec I'approbation de son mari lui-meme. . . . 

" Veuillez agreer cher et illustre Maitre, I'assurance 
de ma plus haute consideration," &c. 

Ernest Renan, who was still alive in 1888, was 
also to be sounded on the subject of " Marriage 
a Failure," but he was down at his little place with 
the unpronounceable name, in the depths of Brittany, 
and I had to abandon the hope of seeing him in 
time. The Church people whom I approached 
naturally refused to say anything, as for them 
marriage is a sacrament and holy. Abbe Le 
Rebours, then vicar of the Madeleine, a very aristo- 
cratic ecclesiastic, as became one in his position at 
the head of a fashionable parish, gleamed blandly 
at me through his spectacles when I saw him at his 
residence in the Rue Ville I'Eveque, and said : "My 
dear sir, we can have no opinions of that sort 
discussed." " I thought so — in fact, I knew it, 
Monsieur I'Abbe," I replied; "but I have to do my 
duty, and ask you what you think of the con- 
troversy ."^ " "It is one," he said, "in which neither 
myself, nor anybody of my cloth, can join. In fact, 
the very heading of it, the question itself, repels us. 
Marriage is a Divine institution, and those whom 




Photo] 



ViCTORIEN SaRUOU. 



[Liibert 



To face page lOi^. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 109 

God joins, you know, let no man put asunder." And 
the urbane Abbe, still gleaming blandly at me 
through his spectacles, bowed me out with the 
final reminder that the Catholic Church does not 
tolerate divorce. 

During this year, 1888, memorable to me by reason 
of my meetings with the French celebrities whom I 
have mentioned, there were still clouds in the region 
of la haute politique. The spectre of war with 
Germany was ever present, and although Boulanger 
was down, the patriots were as effervescent as they 
had been at the time of the Schncebele incident. 

The useful Hohenlohe memoirs again bring out the 
tension between France and Germany at this time 
\fery clearly. In May, 1888, Prince Hohenlohe 
strongly protested against the vexatious passport 
system for Frenchmen visiting the conquered provinces, 
devised by Bismarck. He was afraid that the system 
would lead to war, but Bismarck ruled him out on 
grounds of high policy. Prince Hohenlohe had a 
strange story from the Grand Duke of Baden in 
partial explanation of Bismarck's attitude. The story 
is obviously of the scare order, and the passages in it 
about the temporal power of the Pope furnish matter 
for jocular comment when read in the light of these 
days of strenuous and aggressive anti-clericalism. 
The story was to the effect that a Russo- French plot 
was hatched. France was to get to grips with Italy, 
and Germany would have to deal with Russia. The 
Italians would be compelled by the French to give back 
part of the old Papal States to the Pontiff. This would 
put Austria on the side of France, and German 
Catholics would also favour that country. In the 



110 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

meantime the English fleet would bombard Toulon, 
if France took Spezia. These wild rumours were 
brought to Berlin by Mgr., afterwards Cardinal, 
Galimberti. 

Later on, Prince Hohenlohe says that he saw the 
Crown Prince William, now Emperor, who held that 
the passport regulation was necessary, and said that 
he agreed with the military men who insisted on the 
advisability of bullying the French. The words 
quoted are : " Dass man den Franzosen iibles ziifugen 
miisse." Prince Hohenlohe says here : '* I did not 
enter into that point, but remarked merely that the 
French nation was afraid of war." 

This was monumentally true. The French Govern- 
ment had trampled the panache underfoot when 
Boulanger was put down. The destruction of what 
the Germans themselves knew as " Boulanglsmus " 
was plain to them, without being told by Prince 
Hohenlohe that the French, or at least the majority 
of the nation, went with the Government against the 
ultra-patriots who wanted back Alsace and Lorraine. 
Even those among the French who were temporarily 
fascinated by Boulanger soon returned to sober reason, 
and remembered 1870. 

As to the extraordinary passage about the proposed 
restoration of temporal power to the Pope, in the story 
above referred to, there was not a man of any of the 
French Cabinets in office during the period of crisis, 
who cared a sou about the Pope. At the time alluded 
to by Prince Hohenlohe in the passages quoted, 
namely, May, 1888, M. Floquet, a decided anti-clerical, 
although he had relatives who were priests, was 
President of the Council, M. de Freycinet, War 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 111 

Minister, M. Goblet at the Foreign Office, M. Peytral 
at the Exchequer, and M. Ferrouillot, head of the 
Public Worship Department. There were several 
others whom I do not name, but all were anti-clericals. 
They were not so thoroughly anti-clerical as M. 
Combes or M. Clemenceau. Both Floquet and Goblet 
were partisans of the separation of Church and State. 
but they temporised in the matter, and left the decisive 
step to their successors. Looking back on those days, 
it is interesting to note that in March, 1888, after the 
formation of a new Cabinet, the programme of the 
Government foreshadowed that Associations law which 
enabled M. Combes to deal a deadly blow at the 
religious orders and congregations or communities of 
pious men and women. The programme ran : " The 
Government invites the Chamber to proceed with 
measures of internal reform (other than the revision 
of the Constitution, which would require much con- 
sideration) in the order of their urgency. The Govern- 
ment would submit a Bill on Associations, as a pre- 
liminary to a definitive settlement of the relations 
between Church and State, so as to carry on the 
work of secularisation which was inaugurated by the 
French Revolution." ^ 

As to the " fear of war " at this period on the part 
of France, as stated by Prince Hohenlohe, it is shown 

^ " The work of secularisation which was inaugurated by the 
French Revolution." This sentence shows what French Re- 
piiblicains de Gouvernement had in their minds to do with the 
Church long before the Dreyfus case, and the incessantly 
alleged interference of the Vatican in French home politics. 
I am not holding a brief for either side, but I try to be just 
and impartial. This programme about Church and State was 
issued in 1888. 



112 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

a little in the following passage of the Floquet pro- 
gramme of March, 1888: "The Senate would be 
asked to discuss the military laws already passed by 
the Chamber. The new organisation of the forces 
would augment the means of defence, and so con- 
stitute a guarantee for the maintenance of peace, to 
which the Government is sincerely attached." This 
declaration was greatly applauded by the Left benches. 
And thus we glided on in peace to the Universal 
Exhibition of 1889. 



CHAPTER IX 

The Exhibition of 1889 — A Lord Mayor's banquet in Paris — 
M. Tirard, Sir James Whitehead and the City magnates 
from London — Mysterious disappearance of a journaHst — 
The so-called " reptiles " of the German Press — Bismarck's 
double — Boulangist tentative de regonflement — The Duke 
of Orleans and the Gamelle — Boulanger's suicide — The 
British Embassy in Paris — Lord Lyons and the Republicans 
— The Jubilee garden party. 

THE Exhibition of 1889, which followed the 
period of political agitation identified with 
General Boulanger and his backers, was chiefly notable 
for that ugly construction known as Eiffel's Tower. 
This mass of ironwork became "popular" like every- 
thing that is ugly and commonplace. Before the 
opening of the Exhibition, the ultra- Republicans 
planned the celebration of the centenary of 1789, 
when the great Revolution was beginning. This 
affair nearly spoiled the prospects of the commercial 
people who had organised the Exhibition, as the 
monarchical countries threatened to keep aloof from 
the Fair. A compromise was effected, Russia, 
Austria, England, and the other European nations, 
with the exception of Germany, agreeing to allow 
their traders and shopkeepers to exhibit in Paris, 
unofficially or privately, that is to say, on their own 

9 "3 



114 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

account, and unrecognised by their Governments. 
By this sort of pious fraud the Exhibition was saved 
from fiasco. The Germans who held back made up 
for their absence then by their hearty co-operation 
in the next Universal Exhibition of Paris, that 
of 1900. 

I had very little to do with the Exhibition of 1889. 
The Daily Telegraph had sent over as " special " the 
late Mr. W. Beatty- Kingston, a remarkable man in 
many respects. I met him afterwards in the Paris 
office of the Telegraph when, with Mr. J, M. 
Le Sage, Mr. Clement Scott, and Mr. Bennett 
Burleigh, he came over for President Carnot's funeral. 
During the Exhibition of 1889 Mr. Kingston took 
nearly all the work off the hands of the Paris 
Correspondents, and left us little to do except to 
watch the political and general happenings of the 
time, and to register them. He wrote voluminously, 
but I could not help thinking that he was out of 
his element in doing such work. George Augustus 
Sala would have done it in a more picturesque and 
entertaining manner, but he had ceased to write 
much about Paris at that time. He wrote in 1885 
on the Gingerbread Fair, and towards his decline 
he was also in Paris on light, special work. 

Kingston was a remarkable writer in his own way. 
Like Sala, he was a cosmopolitan, and unlike Sala 
he was a strong authority on international politics. 
Besides writing leading articles, he also showed that 
he could equal, if not distance, any young cdmpetitors 
in what is known as '* interviewing." M. de Blowitz 
himself, who did " interviewing," although it was 
not called by that word in his case, could never have 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 115 

written those columns in which W. Beatty- Kingston 
recorded his meeting with Bismarck at Friedrichsruhe 
and his audience of Pope Leo XIII. at the Vatican, 
when the Pontiff alluded to the present German 
Emperor as '' questo giovane.'" 

One of my most pleasant memories in connection 
with the Exhibition of 1889 is the Guildhall or 
Mansion House sort of banquet given at the Grand 
Hotel by Sir James Whitehead, then Lord Mayor 
of London. Sir James came over to Paris for the 
World's Fair with Sir Polydore de Keyser, Sir, then 
Mr. George Faudel Phillips, and other celebrated 
City men. The most genial man of the whole party 
was Polydore de Keyser, and he was also the most 
vivacious. A Belgian born, and not an Englishman, 
he did more than any of the others with him to make 
the representatives of Great Britain at the Exhibition 
appreciated by the French. 

The Lord Mayor's banquet brought together 
among other people Mr. W. T. Stead, fresh from 
his " Modern Babylon " campaign ; W. Beatty- 
Kingston, Campbell Clarke, Colonel Villiers, of the 
British Embassy, and a crowd of French celebrities, 
commercial chiefly, but also artistic and literary. 
When I went into the banquet hall, I was some 
moments before I could define to myself precisely 
whether the chairman or president at the function 
was the Lord Mayor, M. Tirard, then head of the 
French Cabinet, or Mr. W. Beatty-Kingston, the 
Special Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. Mr. 
Kingston, in truth, occupied a most commanding 
position at the table. He was able to see, and to 
be seen by, everybody. I soon discovered, however, 



116 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

that he had no powdered footmen standing behind 
him. These stood near the Lord Mayor and 
M. Tirard, and they assisted in filling the champagne 
glasses of the guests. The banquet could not have 
been beaten in the City itself so far as viands and 
wines were concerned. The speech-making was 
ponderous and dull, but the speakers were brief 
in their utterances and did not remain long on 
their feet. Everybody went home early with the 
recollection of a magnificent dinner. My enjoyment 
of the feast was slightly marred by the exigencies 
of the special wire. It was I, and not Campbell 
Clarke or Beatty- Kingston, who had to telegraph 
to London an account of the dinner and a pricis 
of the speeches delivered. In this work I had some 
assistance from the Lord Mayor's own reporter, or 
special man, whom I have never seen since, neither 
have I seen many of the others who were at that 
Exhibition banquet of 1889. Not a few of those 
who were there have joined the majority — Sir James 
Whitehead, Sir Polydore de Keyser, M. Tirard, 
the French President of the Council, W. Beatty- 
Kingston, Campbell Clarke, Oppert de Blowitz, and 
even Colonel Villiers of the Embassy, who was one 
of the youngest and seemingly one of the most 
vigorous of those present. Mr. W. T. Stead, who 
was also at the banquet, is still in the land of the 
living. 

It was soon after this, too, that my useful friend, 
Negrau, known as the "little Portuguese," dis- 
appeared mysteriously. The man was only a simple 
reporter, but had he been able to write well he 
might have rivalled the mighty Blowitz. He was 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 117 

of the stuff that Blowitzes are made of He was a 
type of the bold, pushing journaHst of the Continent 
who insists on approaching everybody. He did not 
mind being repulsed — that made him more eager 
to go on. He ended by making everybody receive 
him, and he talked familiarly with nearly every- 
body of importance in Paris. I first met him. at the 
Chamber of Deputies, where he was in the habit 
of lobbying until he extracted something from a 
Member of Parliament. Occasionally he succeeded 
in button-holing a Cabinet Minister. At night I 
used to meet Negrau at Pousset's brasserie in the 
Faubourg Montmartre, where he fraternised with 
Catulle Mendes and several other literary and 
journalistic men to whom he duly introduced me, 
but whom I had not much time to see afterwards. 

Another habitu^ of the original Brasserie Pousset 
in the Faubourg Montmartre was M. Antoine, then 
a simple clerk in a gas company, and who has since 
revolutionised the French stage. With these I 
occasionally foregathered, and Negrau also brought 
me in touch with many other Frenchmen who were 
either notable for their work or interesting as 
personalities. Negrau was all things to all men. 
He talked, as I have said, familiarly to politicians 
and others of prominence, and he was received by 
Royalists and Republicans alike, nobody seeming to 
care what his own special line of politics was. 
Neither did anybody seem to know or care as to 
the special newspaper or the newspapers which he 
represented. This was a mystery, yet he was at 
every function of importance in Paris, and he talked 
with such notabilities as the Due de Broglie, the 



118 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Due Decazes, the Comte de Mun, Paul de Cassagnac, 
the Republicans Jules Ferry, Henri Brisson, Eugene 
Spuller, Charles Floquet, the artists, dramatists, and 
literary men, and also with the policemen and the 
hawkers on the boulevards. 

The man suddenly dropped out of ken. The 
last time that I saw him was on the occasion of 
the banquet given by Sir James Whitehead. He 
was not at that function, but waited in the Grand 
Hotel for news of it from me. This he probably 
sold to the French newspapers. After that he was 
seen no more on the boulevards, and there was a 
report that he had been poisoned by a woman. I 
was really sorry to have lost this poor fellow, but 
I had no time to find out what had become of him. 
I have had to defend his memory before Frenchmen 
who held that he was in the pay of a German 
Correspondent in Paris who was known as "Bismarck's 
double " owing to his resemblance to the Iron 
Chancellor. He was a Herr von Beckmann, and 
was connected with what was termed at the time the 
"reptile press," which was at Bismarck's call. For my 
part, I always found Beckmann an excellent fellow. 
He had to " lie very low " in Paris, in those days, 
with Herr Kramer of the Cologne Gazette, and he was 
never at any official functions. I do not think that 
Beckmann ever had any need of my friend Negrau, 
although the Frenchmen held that he had. This, 
too, was the idea of some of the foreign Correspondents 
in Paris, who also affirmed that Negrau belonged 
to the secret police. It is always easy to acquire 
an unenviable reputation as a political or a police 
spy in Paris, but it was especially so in those days 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 119 

to which I am now referring. I was put down as a 
police spy on the occasion of my presence in the 
editorial offices of M. Clemenceau. My foregatherings 
with Beckmann and Negrau gained for me the 
strange distinction of being regarded as a German 
spy, and my peculiar name was set down as Teutonic. 
Colour was also lent to my supposed connection 
with the *' reptiles " by the fact that I had written 
some paragraphs in the Telegraph calling attention 
to the increasing popularity of German beer in 
Paris. 

This was quoted with great relish in German 
newspapers devoted to the brewing trade, and some 
of the French journalists called the attention of the 
patriots to the matter. The result was that the same 
mob of patriots who had tried to prevent the pro- 
duction of Wagner's " Lohengrin " at the Op^ra 
smashed the windows of a few brasseries on the 
boulevards, wherein beer of Munich and Nuremberg 
was sold. Since that time a change has come over 
the Parisians, who nowadays crowd to hear anything 
by Wagner and who absorb German beer without any 
patriotic misgivings. 

The general elections of 1889 were important, as 
the Floquet Bill was utilised. By that measure scrutin 
darrondissement, previously referred to, was put in 
operation, and it provided that " nobody can be a 
candidate in more than one constituency." This 
was aimed at Boulanger, who was endeavouring to 
imitate the third Napoleon by instituting di plebiscite, 
but his day was over. The lawyers of the Chamber 
were too much for him, and only thirty-eight of his 
men returned to Parliament on the 12th of Novem- 



120 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

ber, 1889, six days after the Exhibition closed. In 
April of the following year — 1890 — the Boulangists 
made what was termed a tentative de regonflement, at 
the municipal elections, but they were again badly 
beaten. 

Just previously to these city elections, Prince 
Louis Philippe Robert Due d'Orl^ans, son of the 
Comte de Paris, came over to France from England, 
for the purpose of being enrolled as an army conscript. 
The Prince, who had been banished from his country, 
was promptly arrested in Paris on the 7th of 
February, 1890. The Republicans did not want a 
new Boulanger, and saw quickly through the princely 
game. The Duke was not only arrested, tried, 
convicted, and sent to a provincial prison, after a 
term in the Conciergerie, where Queen Marie 
Antoinette, her husband and children had been long 
before him, but he was covered with ridicule by the 
Republican Press. His followers, the young Royalists, 
were hooted everywhere, and it was Rochefort, I 
think, who coined for him the nickname of " Gamelba." 
This curious compound was founded on the word 
'' game lie " and the name " Melba." In an address 
intended for French conscripts the Due d'OrMans had 
said that he wanted to share the contents of their 
gamelle, or mess tin. Part of this word was 
coupled with the name of the celebrated Australian 
opera star, who was supposed to be admired by the 
Duke. Rochefort, who was on the Boulangist side, 
had, I think, no deep animosity against the Due 
d'Orl6ans, but he could not resist the temptation to 
perpetrate the joke. The name " Gamelba " remained, 
and even to this day is occasionally applied to the 




Photo 



Dfc d'Orleaxs. 



[11'. S. Stiinrt 



To face p. 120. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 121 

Due d'OrMans by the more blatant among the 
RepubHcans. 

Whatever the future may have in store for Louis 
PhiHppe Robert Due d'OrMans, I do not think that 
he has any ehance of effecting a restoration of the 
monarchy. A Bonaparte might do something, but 
the days of the Bourbons and the Orleans family 
are over. The Royalists whom I knew in Paris, 
that is to say, the older and the more serious members 
of the party, hardly ever referred in my hearing to the 
Due d'Orleans. They seemed, in fact, to ignore his 
existence, and this I attributed to the stories circu- 
lated about his amorous adventures. The younger 
Royalists only smiled at the gossip about the Prince, 
whom they called "a chip of the old block," referring 
to that remote ancestor of his, Henri Quatre, a 
monarch whose career as an ardent amorist is well- 
known. The serious Royalists, who never spoke to 
me about the Prince, would, of course, be quite ready 
to back him if he came forward and gave proof that 
he meant to do something. I found that these 
gentlemen were in such a frame of mind that they 
were ready to back anybody, including the German 
Emperor himself, if he would rid them of the detested 
and execrated Republic. This is not to be wondered 
at, for the Royalists have been loaded with ridicule 
and obloquy by the Republicans, who have also 
attacked their Church. 

Nor is the frame of mind to which I have referred 
peculiar to Royalists in France. It is a matter 
of history that the founders of the Third Republic, 
and notably Jules Ferry, exulted publicly over the 
defeat of the army of Napoleon the Third by the 
Germans in 1870. 



122 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

As to the prospects of the Royalists in France, there 
is not much to be said. Some of them are sanguine 
that the " King will have his own again," but others 
shake their heads as they see the Republic continuing 
without a break. Presidents and Ministers come and 
go, but the regime which the majority of the French 
have accepted is now thirty-six years old, and seems 
destined to go on and prosper. "We have the 
power," say the Republicans with exultation, " and 
we mean to keep it and to hold it against all attempts 
of Bourbons or of Bonapartes." And the Bourbons 
and the Bonapartes with their followers have to hang 
their heads in sorrow and despair, while the Republi- 
cans enjoy power and jibe at them as representatives 
of dead causes which have no possible chance of 
resurrection. And the Republicans, who pull the 
wires, have also a trump card for the electors when 
they tell them periodically that the restoration of 
a dynasty in France would mean eventual war. " We 
Republicans," they say, " are determined on the 
preservation of peace. See what we have done 
during the past thirty-six years. Never has France 
been so prosperous. Her commerce has increased, 
her alliance is sought by foreign nations. She is 
no longer isolated, and at the same time she is in 
perpetual peace. See if the Monarchists can give you 
that." This is the trump card of the Republicans, and 
they play it with success. 

Other events happening in Paris in the year 1890 
have not left much impression on my mind. In the 
following year, however, Paris was startled by the 
news of General Boulanger's suicide at Brussels. 
That was on the 30th of September, 1891, and nearly 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 123 

two months later another sensation was caused by 
the death of Lord Lytton at the British Embassy 
on the 24th of November, 1891. I have not hitherto 
said much about the Embassy or the ambassadors. 
As both are interesting subjects I must here recall 
my reminiscences of the great house in the Faubourg 
St. Honore and of some of the distinguished men who 
have lived there as representatives of Queen Victoria 
and of King Edward. 

The British Embassy in the Faubourg St. Honore 
was built by Mazin in the eighteenth century for the 
Due de Charost. During the First Empire it was 
inhabited by Princess Pauline Borghese, the youngest 
and the favourite sister of the great Napoleon. The 
next occupant was the Iron Duke, who bought the 
residence for 625,000 francs. Nowadays the same 
property is valued at six millions of francs, or 
;^240,ooo> Sir Charles Stuart succeeded the Duke 
of Wellington in 18 16. Next came, in 1825, Vis- 
count Granville, who was folio v/ed by Lord Stuart 
de Rothesay in 1829, and returned to Paris in 1831. 
During the reign of Louis Philippe, Henry Lord 
Cowley and then the Marquis of Normanby were 
at the Embassy. In 1852, Lord Cowley, son of the 
former ambassador, was accredited to the Court of 
Napoleon III. Lord Lyons succeeded him in 1868, 
and reD;iained until 1887, when Earl Lytton came. 
The latter, dying in 1891, was succeeded by Lord 
Dufferin, who was followed in 1896 by Sir Edmond 
Monson, and the present occupant of the old Hotel 
Charost is Sir Francis Bertie. 

My first introduction to the Embassy was on the 
occasion of a garden party given there by Lord 



124 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Lyons in honour of the first Victorian Jubilee in 1887. 
It coincided with a garden party given at the same 
time in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. I was 
rather nervous going into the sacred enclosure of 
the Embassy for the first time. The Consulate was 
familiar enough to me, as I had been frequently there 
on legal business, and also for passports to enable 
me to go to Germany and Russia. The Embassy 
itself I never entered until that day of the garden 
party. When I went inside I saluted the ambassador, 
and was surprised at his thoroughly unofficial aspect 
and apparel. He wore a short black coat, and so 
also did his secretary, Mr. George Sheffield, once a 
well-known figure in Paris, and who, I was sorry to 
hear, died not long since. The dress of the am- 
bassador and of his secretary seemed actually of the 
free-and-easy sort when contrasted with the frock- 
coats of the Englishmen around and the solemn 
evening dress of most of the official representatives 
of the Republic who were present. 

On the lawn of the Embassy I met all the cele- 
brities of the day, and had talks with some of them, 
and notably with Count Ferdinand de Lesseps. I 
also saw Marshal de MacMahon, feeling, as I 
thought, rather uneasy among the Republicans who 
had brought about his resignation of the Presidency. 
But the most sensational figure on the lawn that day 
was "la belle Madame Gauthereau," a lady whose 
portrait in the Salon had been the talk of the season. 
She was a strikingly beautiful woman, and wore 
Greek garb, her hair being manifestly dyed a 
Titianesque red. 

I never saw Lord Lyons after that garden party. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 125 

When he retired he went to London, and died in 
Norfolk House, St. James's Square. It was rumoured 
that he had gone over to the Church of Rome, in 
which he had some relatives ; and it was even given 
out in Paris that he was a Catholic long before he 
left the Embassy. I heard, however, from his former 
secretary, Mr. Sheffield, one Christmas, when he was 
dining with his great friends. Sir Campbell and Lady 
Clarke, at ii6, Champs Elyste, that Lord Lyons 
was inclined to agnosticism, but that after his re- 
tirement he attended Mass regularly at the church 
of the Jesuits in Farm Street.^ 

^ Lord Lyons was attended in his last moments by Dr. Butt, 
Catholic Bishop of Southwark. 



CHAPTER X 

More about the British Embassy — Lord Lytton's reception — 
Lord Lytton as a Parisian — His views on rehgion— His 
sudden death — His successors at the Embassy, Lord 
Dufferin and Sir Edmund Monson — Sir E. Monson at 
Brest and Mr. Gossehn at Ushant — The Drummond 
Castle medals — The English and American Colonies in 
Paris — Notable British and American residents — Count 
Boni de Castellane and Miss Anna Gould — The imitation 
Trianon — The divorce. 

THE next time that I went to the Embassy was 
when Lord and Lady Lytton gave their first 
dinner and reception after they had settled down in 
the Faubourg St. Honore. Previously the ambassa- 
dor's secretary, Mr. Carew, another amiable man 
who died not long after his coming to Paris, showed 
me over the banqueting and reception rooms, which 
were abundantly decorated with ornaments and arms 
brought from India by Lord Lytton. These inspired 
me with memories of Macaulay and pf the days when 
I was among the schoolboys who read his essays 
and found that on Clive and the other on Warren 
Hastings every whit as fascinating as the most 
favourite book of fiction. I had also been reading 
through Sir Edwin Arnold's " India Revisited," and 
with his co-operation and that of Macaulay I wrote 
a column of descriptive matter about the old Hotel 

126 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 127 

Charost and its gorgeous Oriental ornamentation, by 
which the new ambassador to the French Republic 
recalled to the Parisians the fact that he had been 
Viceroy of the vast country over which Queen 
Victoria was proclaimed Empress. Lord Lytton, if 
he read the description, and I have reason to believe 
that he did, must have derived some ephemeral 
entertainment from it. I do not think, however, that 
he went so far as to keep it as a record, as Sir 
Edmund Monson did with my account of his journey 
to Brest for the purpose of bestowing Queen 
Victoria's medals on the Breton fisher-folk and others 
who did the rescue work in connection with the wreck 
of the Drummond Castle off Ushant. 

At the reception following Lord Lytton's first 
banquet at the Embassy the crowd was enormous. 
Besides the notabilities of Paris, nearly all the people 
of the British Colony were there — railway agents, 
drapers, tailors, glovers, and shoemakers. The 
literary men and the principal actors and actresses of 
the Comedie FrauQaise, most of them personal friends 
of the ambassador, were there among the tailors, 
glovers, and shoemakers. Mademoiselle Brandes, a 
favourite with the ambassador, and who had not 
then left the Comedie Fran9aise, was present, and was 
admired by all the men and envied by many of the 
women. When I entered the reception salon on the 
occasion the first person who attracted my attention 
was the renowned M. de Blowitz. He was in the 
centre of a group of ladies, including Countess 
Lytton, and was entertaining them by his talk. The 
Times Correspondent was a great favourite with 
the Lytton family, and I have seen him in their box 



128 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

when they attended a first night or one of the dress 
rehearsals at the Comedie Fran^aise. I do not think 
that he was much Hked by Lord Lytton's predecessor, 
Lord Lyons, who preferred Campbell Clarke to any 
of the Correspondents with whom he had to deal. 

It was at this function that I saw Lord Lytton for 
the first time. He was a small man and looked out 
of place in his diplomatic dress. He certainly did not 
correspond to the idea one forms of a Viceroy of India, 
so far as personal appearance is concerned, nor was he 
in age the " Pelham " that he was in youth. Out on 
the boulevards, he did not impress either. He often 
walked from the Embassy to the Madeleine and away 
up the Boulevard des Italiens. Once I saw him out 
with Mr., now Sir, Henry Austin Lee, and the 
contrast between the two men, one tall, formal, and 
stately, the other, the ambassador, easy-going, small, 
and slim, challenged attention. Lord Lytton was 
more of a boulevardier than any of his predecessors 
or successors at the Faubourg St. Honore. Lord 
Lyons I never met on the boulevards, but his 
secretary, Mr. Sheffield, was frequently on the 
" Italiens." Lord Dufferin had an occasional walk 
on the "asphalte," but it was going out of fashion 
to appear there in his time. Of late years I have 
never met many noted men between the Opera and 
the corner of the Rue Drouot, although at one time 
it used to be crowded with celebrities. In the after- 
noons, formerly, you met most eminent persons either 
at the bookshop which then stood not far from 
the Cafe Anglais on the boulevards, or at 
Tortoni's, which has been transformed from a resort 
of wits into a boot and shoe store. Lord Lytton's 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 129 

end was sudden. No one knew that he was ailino-, 
except, of course, his family. He was reading almost 
to the last, and only a few hours after a nurse had 
handed him a book he was dead. The sad news 
was conveyed to the boulevards and thence to the 
newspaper offices by Dr. Prendergast, who had been 
attending the ambassador. This doctor, an Irish- 
man, died also rather suddenly in Paris some years 
back. M. de Blowitz attributed Lord Lytton's death 
to opium, in which he indulged to some extent, but 
this may be an exaggeration. 

In the letters of Lord Lytton, edited by his 
daughter. Lady Betty Balfour, he is reported to have 
said to Lady Bloomfield : *' What an ass one is to 
write books, as if there were not enough of them in 
the world already ! " Now, this is rather a contra- 
dictory utterance from one who, in spite of Mr. 
Swinburne's satire, was not a bad poet, and had the 
ambition to become a good one. It is also contra- 
dictory when we find Lord Lytton writing verse in 
Paris, and even allowing some of his work to be 
translated into French for a review.^ I referred to the 
religious views of Lord Lyons in a previous page, but 
of those of his successor I cannot say much. I know 
that, out of curiosity, he attended some spiritualistic 
seances when in Paris. His letters show that, like 
every literary man, he had religious problems in his 
mind. Writing, for instance, from Vienna in 1862, to 
his father, he says : " I hope and believe I am a 
Christian, for I heartily recognise in Christ the most 

' Lord Lytton published " After Paradise," or " Legends of 
Exile," in 1887, and subsequently re-wrote in great part the 
" Ring of Amasis," which was translated into French. 

10 



130 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

valuable manifestation of a Divine personality, but I 
must own that I base my intense conviction of the 
truth of Christianity, as a revelation, on conclusions 
differing toto coelo from all the axioms of existing 
Church theology, and that, if my reason left me no 
choice between the acceptance of those dogmas to 
which theology chains Christianity (such as that 
fundamental one of the vicarious suffering of Christ, 
growing out of the previous yet more revolting 
hypothesis of original sin, and the gratuitous arith- 
metical puzzle of the Trinitarian doctrine) or the 
rejection of the whole, I would choose the latter 
alternative." Later on he wrote that " such men as 
Pascal and John Newman are solemn and terrible 
warnings against taking theology au sdrieux. They 
fill me with profound melancholy, and make me almost 
execrate the name of religion." In 1871 he wrote : 
" My whole moral being revolts against the acknow- 
ledgment of any God who must be fitted into the 
monstrous scheme of the Christian Atonement." 

These passages show clearly the place occupied by 
religious problems in the mind of Lord Lytton, and I 
believe that the same perplexing problems haunted 
him to the day of his death. ^ 

^ Since the ptiblication of the " Personal and Literary Letters 
of the Earl of Lytton " by his daughter, Lady Betty Balfour, we 
know that Lord Lytton was very actively engaged in literary 
work while in Paris. The letters sent from the Embassy to Lady 
Salisbury, Lady Betty Balfour, and others show that he followed 
everything. He describes General Boulanger's career, discovers 
(rather late, though), that Madame Floquet was a grand- 
daughter of Goethe's Charlotte, the Lotte of the " Sorrows of 
Werther," passes authors in review, describes minutely a play 
by Sardou, notes that Meilhac is a rather elephantine sort of 
man, tells anecdotes, and narrates how all the novelists send him 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 131 

Of his successors I cannot say much. Lord 
Dufferin, I know, went out to dinner a good deal, and 
was to be met at many houses. He was more of the 
grand seigneur than his predecessor, and impressed the 
French accordingly. But he was not a favourite, or, 
to use that ugly word, "popular," as was Lord Lytton, 
who pleased the French as a man of letters and the 
friend of artists and authors. Lord Dufferin, more- 
over, was in Paris at a time when the entente 
cordiale with England was not even dreamt of. The 
English were decidedly unpopular in Paris, and the 
Russian fever was at its height. During those 
troubled days the ambassador was a good deal away, 
and as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports he spent 
months at Walmer Castle and also on his Irish estate 
at Clandeboye. In his later time in Paris he consoled 
himself by re-studying the Greek poets and dramatists. 
Paris may be a fine ambassadorial post, but I always 
had the impression that men like Lord Lytton and 
Lord Dufferin were comparatively dwarfed there. 
Lord Lytton, as I have said, was welcome as a man 
of letters and an artist, but the official and commercial 
Republicans did not care much about these claims to 
consideration. Nor were they much moved by his 
prestige as one who had been Viceroy of India. As 
to Lord Dufferin, the official Republicans did not seem 
to care about his history and his prestige at all. A 
few articles appeared about him in the newspapers 
just before, and soon after, he took up his post at the 

their books, which he has not time to read. He was, in fact, 
just in the position of a Paris correspondent, and in reading 
these letters one can hardly refrain from thinking what a 
splendid Paris Correspondent he would have been. 



132 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Embassy, but they were not friendly in tone. Before 
Tsar Nicholas came to Paris in October, 1896, Lord 
Dufferin retired from the Embassy. It was currently 
reported at the time that the English Ambassador was 
coolly treated in the matter of invitations to the official 
functions being organised for the Tsar and Tsaritsa'^ 
coming to the French capital. After Lord Dufferin 
had gone some of the Frenchmen began to write 
against him. They accused him of being full of 
morgue, and laid to his door the more capital crime 
of being unable to speak good French. This was 
supposed to be a most terrible indictment, against a 
diplomatist especially. The French, who, with some 
exceptions, attain practical knowledge of foreign 
tongues only by enormous difficulty, are inexorable 
towards the man who fails to speak their own language 
with fluency and accuracy. Bismarck used to say that 
he always mistrusted a person who, not being a 
Frenchman born, spoke the French language correctly. 
The French themselves have no suspicions of this 
sort, and gladly welcome as a friend any one who can 
converse with them on equal terms as regards 
grammar and pronunciation. 

After the departure of Lord Dufferin from Paris, 
less attention than ever was paid to the Embassy 
by the French. The coming of Sir Edmund 
Monson in 1896 almost passed unnoticed. He had 
none of the prestige of his predecessors, and the 
journalists and pamphleteers had no necessity to consult 
biographical dictionaries about him. During his long 
tenure of office in Paris I was only near Sir Edmund 
Monson twice. Once was when he went to 
Brest to distribute the Drummond Castle medals 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 133 

in April, 1897. That was intended to be a minor 
event, but the French, and especially the journalists, 
magnified it into a considerable function. I went 
down to Brest on a Saturday, and on the followino- 
Monday found that the ambassador was represented 
by Sir, then Mr., Martin Le Marchant Gosselin, wjio 
died recently at Lisbon, for the first day of the pre- 
sentation of medals. By the kindness of the French 
Maritime Prefect, or Port Admiral, I was enabled to 
go out to Ushant with Mr. Gosselin on board the 
torpedo-destroyer the " Epervier." Mr., now Sir, 
Henry Austin Lee, was of the party, also Captain 
Paget, R.N., as well as the English Consul and Vice- 
Consul at Brest, and Mr. Mirrilies, the son-in-law of 
Sir Donald Currie, owner of the Drummond Castle. 
As we passed over the place where that liner went 
down. Admiral Barrera, the Maritime Prefect of Brest, 
had a salute of guns fired, and some prayers were also 
recited by a petty officer. I afterwards heard that 
Admiral Barrera was attacked in some of the Re- 
publican papers for the prayers, and that certain mem- 
bers of the Government also made him feel the error 
of his ways. The admiral was one of those whom the 
Republicans were wont to call " sons of archbishops." 
These were officers who had obtained promotion in 
the navy through, as was supposed, clerical and 
Conservative influence. The admiral did not long 
survive the attacks on him. He died a few years 
after the presentation of medals, and he was one of 
those departed Frenchmen whose deaths I sincerely 
regretted. 

During that trip to Ushant I saw and conversed with 
many French naval men, from admirals to lieutenants 



134 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

and petty officers. These I afterwards met on shore, 
and found them most genial and courteous. There was 
just one exception — a Heutenant who seemed to scowl 
at the pressmen, but I subsequently learned that he 
had a great quarrel with a journalist over some matter 
of a naval sort, and that he could not bear the " fourth 
estate " people after that. 

The medals having been distributed at Ushant, and 
other places, by Mr. Gosselin, Sir Edmund Monson 
came to Brest on the following day. There he gave 
medals to local rescuers, visited the graves of persons 
who had been drowned in the Drummond Castle, 
and whose bodies were recovered by the fisher folk of 
the islands, and attended a banquet given by Admiral 
and Madame Barrera at the Naval Prefecture. 

I next saw Sir Edmund Monson at the service in 
the German church, Rue Blanche, on the occasion of 
the death of the Empress Frederick. His successor, 
Sir Francis Bertie, I have never seen. 

As to the Americans, I was a good deal at their 
Legation, afterwards an Embassy, in the time of Mr. 
Levi Morton. He was one of the most estimable 
of the representatives of the United States, and was 
liked by everybody. The French and the Americans 
have always been friendly, and they were especially so 
in the days of Mr. Morton, and also of General 
Horace Porter, who retired a few years since. Mr. 
Levi Morton, being a wealthy man, with an interesting 
wife, was a great entertainer, and had around his 
hospitable board everybody. Royalist and Republican, 
who was of note in Paris. His dinners were famous, 
and he was sincerely regretted by many when he left 
the Legation. In those days I knew all the officials 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 135 

of the U.S. Legation, notably the excellent M. 
Vignaux, who wrote a remarkable volume a few years 
since on Christopher Columbus, and whose experience 
of Paris beats that of any living diplomatist. He has 
been for years an indispensable man at the U.S. 
Embassy, as he was at the Legation. Mr. Levi 
Morton, who was a banker, was succeeded by a 
newspaper proprietor, Mr. Whitelaw Reid, who owns 
the New York Tribune. Mrs. Emily Crawford was 
then his Paris Correspondent, but she seemed to have 
got into some disfavour when the Whitelaw Reids 
were in residence not far from where she lived on the 
Boulevard de Courcelles, near the Pare Monceau. Of 
late years she has been replaced as Correspondent 
of the Tribune, Horace Greely's old paper, by Mr. 
Inman Barnard, one of the m.ost notable members 
of the American colony in Paris. When I first met 
Mr. Barnard he was connected with the New York 
Herald. I was for a long time under the impression 
that he was nothing more than the well-paid private 
secretary of the " Commodore," Mr. James Gordon 
Bennett. He was, in fact, putjorward as that, and 
that only, by some of the Herald men who prided 
themselves on being journalists. As a matter of fact, 
however, Mr. Barnard has had a remarkable career. 
He is one of those men of highly interesting ante- 
cedents and capabilities whom the " Commodore " 
manages to attract to the great American newspaper 
from time to time. Mr. Barnard, who is a Boston 
man, and a Law Graduate of Harvard, was Chief of 
the Staff to the Khedive of Egypt from December, 
1875, to January, 1879, and acted also in Egypt as 
War Correspondent for the Herald and other news- 



136 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

papers, both American and English. He held other 
offices during his sojourn in Egypt, and received 
the Khedive's gold medal at the battle of Tel-el- 
Kebir. 

Of the later American diplomatic representatives, 
who came after the proprietor of the New York 
Tribune, I can say little, but these reminiscences lead 
me to the subject of the colonies of English-speaking 
residents of Paris. 

The members of these two colonies often meet on 
some mutual ground, but they are as different from each 
other as the poles. The upper grade of the British 
colony is more restricted, more select, and more 
aristocratic than that of the Americans. It is re- 
presented by the ambassador, the attaches and 
their families, and some old colonists, as, for 
instance, the late Hon. Alan Herbert, M.D., one 
of the very few men left of the days of Lord 
Henry Seymour, Sir Richard Wallace, Mr. 
Mackenzie Greaves, Grenville Murray, Felix White- 
hurst, General D'Ainslie, the Hon. Denis Bingham, 
Sir E. Blount, and others who were in Paris before 
the Franco-German war ^ and during the early days 

^ Among those old British colonists in Paris were also Sir John 
Cormack ; Dr. McCarthy, whose father had been tutor to Louis 
Philippe's children, and brought over from- Cork Oliffe, after- 
wards Sir Joseph Oliffe, the discovei'er of Deanville, and 
O'Meagher, of the Times ; Mackenzie, of Galignani's Messenger ; 
who left ^7,000 and a collection of curiosities ; and E. Noyce 
Browne, of the Morning Post. Browne and Whitehurst were 
rivals for the patronage of the Emperor. Whitehurst was less 
sedate than Browne, who had married a Colonel's daughter and 
was a family man. He himself was of humbler origin than his 
wife, and had a public-house in his family. The establishment 
was at Brentford. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 137 

of the Third Republic. There are, and have been 
in the British colony from time to time very 
notable persons of whom little was heard. They 
cultivated, if not the simple, at least the quiet, 
unostentatious life, and did not court publicity. 

The American colony in Paris, if less select, or at 
least more democratic, than the important part of the 
British contingent, is strong, numerous, and above all, 
wealthy. There are very few poor Americans in 
Paris. This was borne in upon me once by a Catholic 
clergyman. Father Osmund Cooke, formerly of the 
Passionists' Church of the Avenue Hoche, who was 
in close touch with both colonies. He told me that 
he was once generously invited to send on some of his 
deserving poor to the American church of the Rue 
Bayard. There they would receive some assistance, 
as the upholders of the church had no poor to 
keep. 

The Americans in Paris have their historic names 
from the past, as well as the English, and the greatest 
of these is that of Benjamin Franklin. In our times 
such men as Franklin have been rare in the Paris 
American colony, but their place has been taken, 
prominently, too, by the monied magnates from 
over the Atlantic. When I settled in Paris as a 
resident, twenty-five years back, little was heard of 
save the marriages of the daughters of American 
" kings " of various sorts to needy noblemen who 
were French or Italian. A realistic 7not was 
coined by some French boulevardier — I think that 
it must have been Aurelien Scholl, or one of the others 
who used to meet at Tortoni's for the afternoon 
absinthe or vermouth, long ago — to describe the 



138 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

process of marrying American girls to the needy 
noblemen. It was ** manurer les /raises" — to manure 
the strawberry leaves of the coronets. This is one of 
the acute and cutting mots of which the French 
are masters. It has lingered in my memory with a 
stinging remark made once by an actress who was 
jealous of the candidature of an older rival for a place 
in the Comedie Fran9aise. "If they admit her there," 
said the jealous histrionic lady, "z7 faut dorer le 
dome " — that is to say, make it like the Hotel des 
Invalides — the hospital of old and disabled pen- 
sioners. 

I do not know precisely how many American 
heiresses are inhabiting the houses of the old French 
nobility in the Faubourg St. Germain or the Faubourg 
St. Honore. Their portraits and sketches of their 
careers appear from time to time in French and 
American pictorial reviews. When I settled in Paris 
the chief Transatlantic heiress was Miss Mackay, 
daughter of the Bonanza king, whom Americans 
used to remind me was once a porter in Dublin. 
Miss Mackay was married to a prince of the famous 
house of Colonna at the Papal Nunciature. The 
Mackays soon after left Paris, chiefly owing to the 
tremendous row caused when Mrs. Mackay slashed 
her portrait by Meissonnier as it did not please her. 
The picture was paid for, but all the artists, authors, 
and journalists flew to arms in order to avenge the 
affront offered to their great painter, the master 
Meissonnier. For weeks Paris was ringing with the 
affair, and one of the foremost foes of the American 
"upstarts" was M. Jules Claretie, who was then 
a regular contributor to the Temps, as he is In 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 139 

these days, after a long absence from the columns 
of Senator Hebrard's paper. ^ 

The next Franco-American marriage which I have 
good cause to remember was that of Count Boni de 
Castellane with Jay Gould's daughter, Miss Anna 
Gould. That event seemed to have srone off 
under the happiest auspices. A few years after it, 
Parisians were rushing to the Avenue des Champs 
Elysees to see the imitation Trianon built with 
Jay Gould's money for his daughter and her 
French husband. The place was an exact replica 
of the Versailles Trianon, built for Madame de 
Maintenon. 

The imitation Trianon had hardly been finished 
when there were ominous rumours of dissensions 
between the Countess de Castellane and her husband. 
It was also darkly hinted that the Gould millions were 
being squandered. The hints one morning came out, 
with a remote resemblance to hard facts, in the front 
page of the Figaro, and led to a tragedy. The 
Figaro had at that time a working connection 
with the Daily Telegraph, and it was from the 
Telegraph office that the rumours of the Castellane 
dissensions floated to the Figaro. When the 
paragraph about the affair appeared in the French 
paper. Count Boni de Castellane and his father, the 
Marquis, rushed to the Rue Drouot and asked to see 
the editor of the Figaro. They were ushered into 
the sanctum of M. F. de Rodays, and Count Boni at 
once taunted that gendeman with having libelled him. 

^ Meissonnier took a lot of trouble over the portrait, making 
not only a fine likeness of Mrs. Mackay, but doing full justice to 
her splendid attire, which included a gorgeous Rembrandt hat. 



140 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Before M. de Rodays could reply he received two 
bullets in the legs, and was disabled for months. 

Now since that tragedy the dissensions in the 
Castellane family are of public notoriety, and have 
been related with great wealth of detail in English 
and in American newspapers. The suit for divorce 
brought by the Countess de Castellane, nde Anna 
Gould, was on for hearing in the Paris Civil Court on 
the 31st of October, 1906. Although it is actionable 
in France to publish Divorce Court proceedings, some 
London newspapers at least risked prosecution. This 
also was done by several English newspapers in 1905, 
in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Macbride, in which the 
wife, formerly Miss Maud Gonne, brought charges 
against her husband. In the Castellane case the 
Count was referred to as nourishing fourteen ladies in 
luxury, Maitre Cruppi, who held a brief for the 
Countess, said that she did not charge her husband 
with extravagance and with trying to keep money 
from her, although she could do so, but her chief 
reason for bringing the action was owing to his 
cruelty and to his infidelity. Once in 1895 ^^e 
Count pinched his wife until the blood came, and 
he soon after that boxed her ears. He had, it was 
alleged, five flats and a villa at Neuilly for mistresses; 
once misconducted himself with a lady at a country 
house, and on another occasion pretended that he was 
dying, and asked for a certain woman to be sent to 
cheer him up in his last moments. His wife made 
the doctor go to see him. The medical man soon 
pierced through the sham, and made the Count get 
out of bed. It was after that the Countess resolved 
to sue for a divorce. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 141 

That divorce was granted on November 14, 1906. 
The Court accorded a divorce to the Countess *' on 
account of the wrongs and grievances inflicted 
by the husband, and gives to her the custody of the 
children, whom she may not move from French soil 
without the authorisation of their father." 

And this was the end of the great marriage between 
the scion of a noble French family and the daughter 
of the wealthiest man in America. How well I 
remember the interest taken in the engagement of 
Miss Anna Gould to Count Boniface de Castellane, 
in February, 1895. Count Boniface, or Boni, is related 
to the Talleyrands through Josephine, daughter of 
Dorothea, Princess of Courland and Sagan and 
Duchesse de Dino. Dorothea had been favourite 
niece and nurse of the celebrated Talleyrand, Bishop 
of Autun, who served so many masters. She lived 
with him in the hotel or private residence in the 
Rue Saint Florentin, near the Tuileries, afterwards 
occupied by Baron Alphonse de Rothschild. Dorothea 
married Edmund de Talleyrand, and her daughter 
Josephine married the Marquis Henri de Castellane. 
The latter was grandfather of Count Boni, who 
married Jay Gould's daughter. There was a Marquis 
Maurice de Talleyrand, who had married a Miss 
Joseph Beers Curtis, of New York, and was subse- 
quently divorced from her. This was a precedent for 
the Castellane-Gould marriage, which has also ended 
in a divorce. 

The Castellanes were for some years after marriage 
united enough. The Countess became a strong 
Nationalist as well as Royalist. In June, 1899, 
when there were demonstrations on the great race- 



142 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

courses over the assault on President Loubet at 
Auteuil, committed by Baron de Cristiani, the 
Countess joined the manifestants of the Nationalist 
side, and was going about shouting, as some of the 
Frenchmen said at the time: ** Vive Vamde! Vive 
Pamde ! " This imperfect pronunciation of French on 
the part of the young Countess was, as usual, pro- 
ductive of mirth to those priding themselves on their 
perfect utterance of that language. 

No reference, however fragmentary, to the American 
colony in Paris would be interesting without 
including that remarkable man, Mr. James Gordon 
Bennett. It cannot be gainsaid that of all the foreign 
residents in Paris the proprietor of the New York 
Herald has the most predominating place. He is 
a rickissime, a " multi-millionaire," a " newspaper 
king," a foremost figure in all events, especially those 
of a sporting character, happening in Paris, Nice, 
Cannes, or Monte Carlo. I have seen Mr. Bennett 
in various places — in his splendid residence in the 
Avenue de Champs Elysees, at his Paris office, in 
a brasserie refreshing himself with a glass of four- 
penny beer, in the very thick of a crowd, driving four- 
in-hand, riding in the Bois, and on the top of an 
omnibus. At one time he is in the outskirts of 
Timbuctoo or Teheran, at another enjoying a stroll 
on the Paris boulevards, smoking a pipe of fragrant 
tobacco on his balcony at Beaulieu, or watching the 
petits cheveaux gambling game in a seaside casino. 
And all the time he has his hand on the working of 
his newspapers. Nothing escapes his attention in the 
way of news. He has had the very best reporters 
that money could buy, and he has also had able 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 143 

writers. He is a very Moloch for men, and has 
used up hundreds of notable journalists. Mr. Bennett 
was born in New York in 1841, and seems to be one 
of those men who are built to go on for ever. He 
had a fall from his mail-coach once in Paris. The 
fall would have killed two ordinary men, but it did 
not kill him. He was in the hands of the sursfeons 
for months, and then recovered his usual strenorth. 



I saw him walkino^ on the boulevards soon after his 



"& 



recovery. He was as brisk and vigorous as ever, 
and, as his fellow-countrymen would say, " hard as 
nails." The strangest thing in connection with 
Mr. Bennett is that his name is never printed in his 
own newspapers, but he gets an international ad- 
vertisement through his patronage of automobilism. 
He has also a habit of keeping out of the American 
and European editions of the Herald the names of 
persons whom he does not like. 



CHAPTER XI 

Americans in Paris — Mr. J. G. Bennett — Mr. Joseph Pulitzer — 
Other Americans — Sardou's " Thermidor " — Origin of the 
" Bloc " — The Empress Frederick in Paris — Her cold 
reception — Death of Prince Napoleon — The bloodstained 
shirt and M. Constans — Franco- Russian foregatherings — 
A prelate's prosecution — M. Constans and M. Laur — The 
'■^ ^ournee des Gifles^^' or a political Boxing-day — Ravachol 
the dynamiter. 

ONE of those who were out of favour for many 
years with the powerful proprietor and director 
of the Herald was the elder Coquelin. When the 
latter was starring in the States some years ago 
orders were issued from Paris that his name was 
never to be printed in any editions of the Herald. 
I do not know if M. Constant Coquelin cared much 
about this ostracism from the columns of an influential 
newspaper. I know that he once told Campbell Clarke 
that he never read any but French newspapers. Of 
this I had my doubts, in the first place because the 
two Coquelins are from Boulogne-sur-Mer, know 
English well, have often been in London, and in the 
second place French actors by no means disregard 
what the foreign Press may have to say about them. 
It was not a humorous fancy that prompted the 
obliteration of M. Coquelin's name from the Herald^ 

144 



FORT^' YEARS OF PARIS 145 

but displeasarex mething that had been said by 
the great French »median. It was at the time 
passing strange to note that all the minor persons 
accompanying M. Coquelin, the satellites around the 
star, were duly mentioned and often favourably noted 
in the Herald. 

One of the predominating figures at " first nights " 
in Paris is Mr. Bennett, but he only 2Xl^x\^^ premieres 
of the sensational sort. I have never seen him in 
any of the Montmartre or boulevard guignols or boxes. 
He never misses a new play by Sardou, or a new 
"creation" of Sarah Bernhardt. He is a frequent 
visitor to the Opera, but I think he prefers the drama 
to music. This I infer only from an entertaining 
ancedote of the great newspaper magnate narrated 
by Mr. T. P. O'Connor in one of his papers. This 
runs that when once on board his yacht the Lysistrata 
— or rather the Lysistrate, for I think Mr. Bennett 
took the name from M. Maurice Donnay's play, and 
not straight from Aristophanes — the proprietor of the 
Herald made a man of music who was in attendance 
sing over and over again, while accompanying himself 
on the piano, the song about Misther Riley : — 

"Are you Misther Riley that kapes this hotel, 
Are you Misther Riley they spake of so well ? 
Then begor, Misther Riley, you're lookin' quite well." 

But the *' Commodore " is fond of repetition, and 
has kept up for years in his Paris edition the 
excruciating jokes of the " old Philadelphia lady " 
and " Patrick." Another eccentric feature of the 
Herald of Paris consists in the letters published in 
its columns, in some of which Mr. Bennett jumps 

11 



146 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

on his correspondents, while in others he is 
jumped on himself. In spite of the antique and 
repeated jokes and the eccentric letters, the Paris 
Herald is a mine of news, and its reviews of literature, 
art, music, and the drama are usually done by com- 
petent men. As I have already pointed out, Mr. 
Bennett has the knack of attracting remarkable 
journalists to his paper. Of these, among the most 
remarkable were Stanley, Russell Young of old, and 
in later times, Barnard, Meltzer, Gordon Smith, and 
Aubrey Stanhope. There have been other capable 
men on the Herald in Paris as well as in New York, 
but their names escape my memory. From time to 
time some notable Frenchmen — Henri Rochefort, for 
instance — have contributed to its columns. 

Another prominent American in Paris is Mr. Joseph 
Pulitzer, proprietor of the New York World. His 
brother, Albert Pulitzer, is, or was until recently, a 
resident in Paris. Joseph Pulitzer does not now come 
to Paris so frequently as he did towards the end of the 
last century, when his sight began to fail. In the early 
eighties I used to see Mr. Joseph Pulitzer reading the 
newspapers in a humble establishment, known as 
Neale's Library, in the Rue de Rivoli. This place was 
enlarged later on and is now in the hands of Messrs. 
W. H. Smith and Son. At Neale's Library of old a 
good many celebrities might be met, but it never had 
the prestige of Galignani's, where, in the days gone by, 
were to be seen Thackeray, Dickens, Wilkie Collins, 
Frank O'Mahoney or "Father Prout," G. A. Sala, 
Edmund Yates, when he was on the New York 
Herald staff, and a host of other men distinguished 
in various walks of life. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 147 

The Americans in Paris whom I knew best were, 
of course, the journalists. These latter were 
frequently coming and going, particularly those of 
the Herald and World. Mr. Pulitzer's capacity for 
absorbing men is as great as that of Mr. Bennett, 
and I have seen many a New York World man, 
from Mr. Ives to Mr. Stethson and Mr. McKenna. 
Among the more permanent journalists serving 
American papers in my time were Lamar Middleton 
of the Chicago Daily News, Barnard, already referred 
to, Valerien Gribayedoff, who is artist as well as 
writer, and is known among his friends as " Grib " 
tout court, and Victor Collins, an Irishman who 
wrote for the New York Sun. Mr. Conway, who 
for a long time represented the famous " Willie " 
Hearst in Paris as Correspondent of the New York 
Journal, I never met. I believe that he went over to 
assist Mr. Hearst in his unsuccessful campaign for 
the governorship of the State of New York. Conway 
belonged to what used to be known as the " fallen 
angel" or "spoiled priest" lot in Paris. There are 
about half a dozen of these, English and American. 
Nearly all work for the Press, but I believe that one 
or two ex-ecclesiastics have not been able to get 
beyond shops or stores, and are obliged to "sell 
things " in order to keep themselves afloat. Some 
of the " fallen angels " have made remarkably good 
journalists, and write ably for the English and 
American Press. One thing is noticeable about them, 
and that is, they do not attack their Church, as some 
of the French ex-ecclesiastics are inclined to do. 
They have never been so truculently disposed 
towards religion as M. Charbonnel, for instance, 



148 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

who "threw his cassock on the nettles" one day, 
and the next was inditing fierce attacks on his former 
colleagues in the columns of a most venomous anti- 
clerical paper. 

Leaving minor matters, I must now call up some 
of the other more important or interesting events of 
the year 1891. The year, as I have noted already, 
was remarkable for two events which happened 
towards its close. These were the suicide of General 
Boulanger and the death of Earl Lytton at the 
Embassy in the Faubourg St. Honore. 

I must go back to the beginning of the year, 
when in January, 1891, Sardou's Thermidor led to 
disturbances at the Theatre Fran9ais and in the 
streets. As is well known, Sardou had depicted 
Robespierre in a manner which the Republicans, 
Radicals, and Communists deemed unfavourable. I 
saw nothing of the rows at the theatre, for the 
reason that Campbell Clarke held me back from the 
place, and said that he would go himself. I believe 
that he was under the impression that I would join 
in the demonstration against Sardou, who had received 
me so angrily at Marly in 1888. I was very sorry 
not to have seen the disturbances, and it is probable 
that I would have had some part in them, as I 
had in those of the Boulangist period. ^ 

I was present in the Chamber of Deputies, how- 
ever, when the disturbances over Thermidor were 
brought on for discussion. It was then that M. 
Clemenceau launched the simple word ''bloc" which 
"caught on" everywhere, and which has since come 
to mean so much, a whole party in Parliament 
being known as '"blocards." M. Clemenceau, in his 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 149 

speech about Thermidor denounced any attempt to 
ridicule or make litde of Robespierre, and declared that 
the Revolution and its men must be accepted e^i bloc. 

In the following February there were some minor 
disturbances, this time over the visit of the Empress 
Frederick of Germany to Paris. The Empress was 
asked by her son to invite French artists to send their 
pictures to an exhibition about to be opened in Berlin. 
Prince Hohenlohe states in his memoirs that the 
Empress gave mortal offence by first going to Bonnat 
and others, appearing to overlook such men, for 
instance, as Carolus Duran. I was rather surprised to 
read that Carolus fired up about this, and applied a 
nasty name to the Empress. Some of the overlooked 
artists may probably have endorsed, if not participated 
in, the commotion caused by the visit of the Empress. 
This was attributed to the Patriotic League, or the 
Boulangists, who wanted an excuse for bringing 
themselves forward. The Empress Frederick had 
accordingly to curtail her stay in the inhospitable 
city, and I was at the Gare du Nord when, attended 
by the German Ambassador and his family and staff, 
she hurried over to England. Her son, the Emperor 
William, took his revenge for the affront to his mother 
and to himself by increasing the measures of rigour in 
Alsace-Lorraine. The French have not forgotten 
Alsace-Lorraine, but the Germans are viewed with 
less hostility at present in France, and especially in 
Paris, where they participated largely in the last 
Universal Exhibition. Moreover, since that time, 
1900, German traders in Paris have increased in num- 
bers, and they have no need now to give themselves 
out as Austrians or Swiss. 



150 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Shortly after the agitation over the Empress 
Frederick's visit, there died at Rome a man who once 
filled a large space in Parisian history. This was 
Prince Jerome Napoleon, cousin of the Emperor 
Napoleon III., and husband of Princess Clotilde of 
Savoy, ^ daughter of Victor Emanuel, grandfather of 
the present King of Italy. Prince Napoleon, as 
he was called in Paris, when they did not use the 
nickname of " Plonpon," in memory of his absence 
from the Crimean campaign, lived in the Avenue 
d'Antin, and was heard of a good deal. While full of 
the Bonapartist spirit, and mindful of the traditions of 
his family, he cultivated the society of Republicans, 
and was regarded as a Freethinker, because he attended 
the hogs' pudding banquets organised by anti-clericals 
on Good Fridays for the purpose of annoying the 
Catholics, who fast rigidly on that day. I do not think 
that Prince Napoleon attended these banquets in his 
later years in Paris. In any case, it is certain that his 
attitude towards the Church changed when he became 
old, either through aversion to the policy of the 
Republicans, who were beginning the campaign 
against Rome which developed to such an enormous 
extent in this century, or owing to the influence of 
his wife, the Princess Clotilde, who has led the life 
of a lay nun. There is no reason why this Princess 
should not be canonised eventually by her Church, as 
were St. Elizabeth of Hungary and other royal saints. 
In spite of the examples of her father and her husband, 
both notorious free-livers and by no means given to 

I Princess Clotilde was originally in love with the Due de 
Chartres, when he was at the Turin Military School. To prevent 
a marriage she was "made over '' to Prince Jerome Napoleon. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 151 

acts of piety, she has retained throughout life her 
original fervour and devotion. I last saw the Princess 
Clotilde at the funeral of Princess Mathilde Napoleon. 

Prince Napoleon died hard, and his last mot charac- 
terised the man. " I can succeed in nothing," said he 
on his deathbed, " not even in dying." Another man 
of a far different mould, and differing also in station 
from Jerome Napoleon, said before he passed away, 
•* I am dying beyond my means." This, too, might 
apply to " Plonplon," who had got through a large 
part of his fortune when he was expelled from Paris, 
with the other princes of families that had reigned in 
France. His repudiation of his son, Prince Victor, 
before he died, caused a split in the Bonapartist 
party. Prince Jerome had left the succession as 
leader of the party to Prince Louis, his other son, 
but the latter did not want it. Whatever the 
heritage may be worth in the future, it is absolutely 
valueless now, and Prince Victor is not likely to try 
to do anything rash while the Empress Eugenie and 
his mother. Princess Clotilde, are alive. 

Among other events in 1891 was the shooting of 
several persons by the troops and gendarmes during 
the strikes at Fourmies in the North of France. This 
led to a fearful agitation in the Chamber of Deputies, 
which was fomented by the production before the 
house of a bloodstained shirt, pierced by five bullets. 
The producer was Ernest Roche, a Boulangist, who 
had also belonged to the Communist party, and was 
one of Rochefort's trusted men. I know Roche very 
well, and have had many a meeting with him. He 
comes from Bordeaux, was originally a lithographer, 
and soon after arriving in Paris made a mark as an 



152 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

eloquent speaker, with a tendency towards pathos, at 
assemblies of Communists and Socialists. Then he 
was patronised by Henri Rochefort, whom he adores, 
wrote for the Intransigeant, and was elected to the 
Chamber for a Paris district. Roche, who can be 
logical as well as melodramatic and emotional, usually 
obtains a hearing in the Chamber, unlike his master 
Rochefort, who, when a deputy, could not make his 
voice reach all the benches, and used to be amazed 
to find his parliamentary colleagues indulging in rather 
boisterous conversation while he spoke. It was no 
wonder that he left parliamentary life in disgust, calling 
the deputies "■paperassiers^' and that he resolved to 
devote all his energy to his old work. 

Roche, after .having displayed the bloodstained 
shirt with the bullet holes in it, called for the im- 
peachment of M. Constans, who had sent Rochefort 
into exile with General Boulanger and Count Dillon. 
M. Constans was then Minister of the Interior 
in the Cabinet formed by M. de Freycinet on 
March 17, 1890, which lasted until February 27, 1892, 
when M. Emile Loubet became President of the 
Council. 

M. Constans was not impeached at the instance 
of M. Ernest Roche, but he was destined to fall in 
the following year owing to his pugilistic attitude 
towards another Boulangist, M. Laur. Two events 
of greater importance happened before the close of 
the year 1891. The first was the visit of Tsar 
Alexander of Russia to Admiral Gervais, at Cronstadt. 
The Tsar went on board the Admiral's flagship and 
listened bare-headed to the " Marseillaise." There 
was wild enthusiasm in Paris over this, and the com- 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 153 

pliment was returned by the introduction into France 
of the Russian hymn in honour of the Tsar. This 
was played by all the regimental bands and sung 
by the local and parochial orphionistes or choral 
societies, and the Russian fever raged. All this 
happened during the summer of 1891, and in the 
November of that year, the same month in which 
Lord Lytton died, took place the prosecution of a 
French prelate, Mgr. Gouthe - Soulard, who was 
brought before a Paris Court for having written a 
vehement letter to M. Fallieres, who was then 
Minister of Justice and of Public Worship. The 
Minister, owing to a street riot caused by the irreve- 
rent action of French pilgrims at the tomb of King 
Victor Emmanuel the Second in the Pantheon 
of Rome, issued certain orders. The conduct of the 
pilgrims caused them to be hooted and hustled in the 
streets of Rome. Pilgrims of other nationalities were 
also made to suffer for the attitude of the French, who 
were mostly young men. M. Fallieres ruled that the 
French prelates or priests were not to take any more 
pilgrims to Rome without having previously obtained 
the permission and the sanction of the Government. 
Mgr. Gouthe-Soulard demurred to this order and had 
to come up from his palace at Aix to the Palais de 
Justice of Paris, where he was condemned to a fine of 
3,000 francs. This Gouthe-Soulard incident was the 
starting-point of that hostility which the Republicans 
accuse the French Catholics of entertaining towards 
the existing form of government in France. All the 
Reactionaries endorsed the prelate's letter to M. 
Fallieres, and denounced the Government. Catholi- 
cism in France thence began to be identified with the 



154 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

cause of the Royalists more than ever, and to be 
a good Catholic meant to be an opponent of the 
Republic. This antagonism or hostility of the Catholics 
was used as a formidable weapon against them during 
the agitation over the expulsion of the religious 
orders and the riots caused by the separation of 
Church and State. 

At the same time there were, and there are, Re- 
publican Catholics, but the others — the Reactionaries 
— carefully remind them that neither they, nor the 
late Pope Leo XIII., who laboured hard to reconcile 
the Church and the French Republic, got much 
advantage by their full acceptance of the present form 
of Government. On the contrary, as the Reaction- 
aries say, the Republic conceded nothing, and its 
administrators deceived and cajoled both Leo XIII. 
and his successor Pius X. 

I have a vivid recollection still of the remarkable 
events of the year 1892 in France. In the January 
of that year I saw the Minister of the Interior, 
M. Constans, jump from his place and strike M. 
Laur, a Boulangist. It was one of the wildest scenes 
that I ever witnessed in the Chamber of Deputies. 
Men of different parties and groups were howling, 
shrieking, cursing, and shaking their fists at one another. 
Desks were banged, books, papers, and inkpots were 
flung about, and it seemed as if the roof of the 
world were about to fall in. Laur, who led to this 
fearful din, had called the attention of the House 
to the attacks made on M. Constans in Rochefort's 
paper, the Intransigeant, and he wanted to know what 
the Government proposed to do in the matter. Here 
M. de Freycinet, who was President of the Council 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 155 

and War Minister, moved the previous question, 
whereupon Laur said that the Government was tryino- 
to screen a man, marked and execrated by public 
opinion. Thereupon M. Constans struck the deputy, 
and the day, which was January 19, 1892, was known 
as the ''Journde des Gifles'' M. Constans expressed 
regret for his act of violence and loss of self-control, 
and a committee which was appointed to look into 
the affair declined to advise proceedings against a 
Senator. The career of M. Constans as a Minister 
was finished soon after that, and he subsequendy went 
as ambassador to Constantinople. 

I confess that I was as sorry for the downfall 
of Constans as I was for that of Ferry, although the 
former had marked me as a partisan of Boulanger and 
had me watched, and Ferry's strong anti-clerical 
policy was opposed, as was that of M. Combes 
afterwards, to my ideals of justice, freedom, and 
fair play. 

This year of the Constans episode was also that 
of the dynamite explosions. Of these, one occurred 
quite close to where I lived. It was the outrage done 
by Ravachol in a house in the Rue de Clichy wherein 
lived, on the topmost floor, M. Bulot, an assistant or 
deputy of the Procureur-General of the Republic. 
This assistant had distinguished himself by his 
vigorous denunciation of anarchists, and he was 
marked by Ravachol. The explosion occurred on a 
Sunday morning, and I ran out when I heard the 
dull, ominous report, which shook the houses in my 
street. Entering the Rue de Clichy, I made my way 
to the house, and found there Aurelien Scholl. He 
was a neighbour of mine, and when I accosted him he 



156 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

was by no means in the mood to make jokes or to 
emit witticisms. He was only partially dressed, and had 
jumped out of bed to discover what was the matter. 
He lived exactly opposite the house nearly blown up, 
or rather blown down, by Ravachol. At first he 
thought that his own house had been dynamited, but 
as the roof was not falling in, he believed that an 
attempt had been made to damage the Sacr6 Coeur 
basilica at Montmartre. On going into the street he 
saw at once where the affair had happened. I left 
Scholl climbing a ladder placed against the damaged 
house. He wanted to see if anybody had been killed 
or injured. This was not the case, but the bomb 
exploding on the staircase had seriously damaged the 
house, which had to be propped up and repaired from 
top to bottom. My attention was temporarily taken 
away from this dynamite explosion by instructions 
which I received to ask Father Forbes, the Scotch 
Jesuit, then living in the house of the Society in the 
Rue de Sevres, what he proposed to do in view 
of his expulsion from France for having said from 
the pulpit that the army was a school of moral and 
physical corruption for the youth of the country. 

Strangely enough the noise of the next serious 
dynamite explosion, that of Vary's restaurant, I heard 
while sitting in the offices of the Daily Telegraph, then 
near the Bourse. V6ry's was blown up by the Anarchists 
as Ravachol had been arrested on the information 
given by a waiter there. The owner of the restaurant 
and his wife were fatally injured, and a customer had 
a narrow escape. It was only a small eating-house 
dignified with the name of restaurant. I was on the 
spot a few moments after the explosion, which had 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 157 

completely gutted the shop, leaving the ceiling and 
the walls bare. Everything that had been in the 
place in the way of fixings and furniture was reduced 
to atoms. 

Ravachol was subsequently condemned to the 
guillotine, not, of course, for the damage done by him 
to the house near me in which M. Bulot lived, but 
because he had murdered a so-called hermit from 
whose hut, near Lyons, he took 30,000 francs. With 
this equivalent of ^1,200 the dynamiter helped many 
of his comrades, and was able to furnish them with 
the explosive stuff which caused so much alarm and 
destruction throughout Paris in 1892. The other 
explosions of that terrible year, when people were 
expecting to be blown up at any moment, were at 
the house of the Princess de Sagan in the Rue 
de Crenelle, at the residence of M. Benoist, a judge, 
on the Boulevard Saint Germain, at the Lobau 
barracks of the Municipal Guards near the Hotel de 
Ville, and in the police station of the Rue des Bons 
Enfants, near the Louvre. The latter was a fearful 
affair. The bomb had been left at the offices of the 
Carmaux Mines Company, Avenue de I'Gpera. The 
Anarchists had marked this company after the strikes 
had broken out in the mines, and they accordingly 
despatched a dynamiter to the Paris office. 



CHAPTER XII 

Dynamite outrages — The Panama bubble — The Anti-Semitic 
campaign — M. Drumont and the Jews — Jewish officer 
killed in duel — Baron de Reinach's mysterious death — 
M. Clemenceau and Dr. Herz — The sick man of Bourne- 
mouth — The Clemenceau-Deroulede duel — The " pot de 
Vin " ballet — The Panama cheques — Foreign Corre- 
spondents expelled — Admiral Avellan's visit — The question 
of Siam — Anti- English feeUng — The dynamiters Henry and 
Vaillant. 

INSIDE the door of the offices of the Carmaux 
Company the explosive was found, and the con- 
cierge, fearing to touch it, sent for the necessary police- 
man. The latter boldly took it to the Commissariat 
or station near at hand, that of the Rue des Bons 
Enfants. There he placed it on a table before his 
chief and it exploded instantly, killing the man who 
brought it and four others. I saw the fragments of 
the bodies being put into sacks half an hour after 
the explosion, which I had heard as I was on my 
way to the office of the Telegraph to begin the 
work of the afternoon. I shall never forget the scene 
in the police-station of the Rue des Bons Enfants. 
The men who had escaped were actually crying. 
They were dazed, dulled, stupefied, and a daring 
anarchist or two might have done what they liked 
with them. That explosion in the Rue des Bons 
Enfants was one of the most terrible of the series. 

158 




Photo] 



Edouard Drumont. 



[Petit 



To face p. 159. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 159 

It was soon forgotten, however, as the first 
murmurs and mutterings of the Panama cyclone 
were making themselves heard. There were also the 
beginnings of the fierce fights between Semites and 
Anti-Semites, Jews and Christians, which were to 
culminate in the Dreyfus case. Nothing definite 
was done in the Panama business until the close 
of the year 1892. I must therefore take the Jewish 
affairs first. Hebrews and Christians, or, to be more 
correct, Hebrews and French Catholics, had been at 
war ever since the failure of the Union Generale 
Bank, which was founded in 1876 with a capital of 
four millions of francs, increased afterwards by M. 
Bontoux to twenty-five millions of francs. It failed, 
and its story is told in Zola's book " L' Argent." 
Catholic investors were ruined, and the Rothschilds, 
against whose financial supremacy the founders of 
the Union Generale fought, remained masters of the 
market. The French Catholics were beaten, as the 
Barings were beaten in 1893. Then came Edouard 
Drumont — "-En/in Drumont vint," to alter Boileau's 
line about Malherbe. This able journalist, who is a 
veritable Hebrew in appearance, has often been set 
down as a Jew. The Hebrews, however, repudiate 
him, and deny that he belongs to the Chosen People. 
He comes from the North of France, and was for 
some years on the staff of the LibertS, but he 
left that paper because it was financed by the Israelite 
Pereires. In 1886 Drumont's "La France Juive " 
appeared, and caused a terrible uproar. He had to 
fight with Charles Laurent and with Arthur Meyer, 
a born Jew, who is now one of the pillars of Catholic 
Christianity. 



160 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Drumont next founded the Libre Parole with, 
it is said, the money of the Jesuits, but that is 
as doubtful as everything else said about those 
mysterious men who follow the rules of St. Igna- 
tius. Any way, the new paper opened fire on the 
Jews in general and on Jewish army officers in 
particular. 

Down at Melun, a large garrison town, a Captain 
Cr^mieu-Foa took exception to the articles of the 
Libre Parole, and fought Drumont and one of 
his staff named Lamase. It was resolved to keep 
the duel with Lamase out of the papers, but Captain 
Cremieu-Foa's brother gave a report of the encounter 
to the Matin, and the Marquis de Mor^s, one of 
the seconds of Lamase, challenged Captain Meyer, 
who had been a second for his Jewish co-religionist, 
Cremieu-Foa. Captain Meyer was killed, and the 
antagonism between Jews and Catholics became 
envenomed. The campaign of the Libre Parole 
was not stopped by any means after these events. 
It raged with fury during the Dreyfus case, when the 
country was nearly torn asunder by those who were 
for the exiled officer and those who execrated him. 
On one side were the Royalist and Nationalist 
Catholics, with their papers the Gaulois and the 
Libre Parole, and on the other the out-and-out 
Republicans, the Radicals, the Socialists, the majority 
of the foreign colonists, and even some of the 
Catholics. 

On special occasions during the long Dreyfus 
crisis the Libre Parole offices on the boulevard 
were brought into special prominence by a placard 
displayed, inscribed with the words " A bas lesjuifs /" 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 161 

This so enraged A. D. Vandam, author of "The 
Englishman in Paris," that one night when I was 
out on the boulevards with him, he wanted me to 
join him in a rush to the editorial sanctum of 
Drumont, whom he meant to challenge. I had some 
difficulty in persuading Vandam not to get him- 
self into trouble over Drumont's diatribes, especially 
as he had important work concerning the Dreyfus 
Case in hand at the moment. And at the same time 
Vandam, although in appearance an unmistakable 
Hebrew, had but comparatively little sympathy with 
his race. He had long been under the influence of 
Clifford Millage, of the Daily Chronicle^ who nearly 
made him become a Catholic. 

The funeral of Captain Meyer, who was brought 
to Paris to be buried, was a great Jewish demon- 
stration. Some did not regard the demonstration 
as serious. Herr Beckmann, the German to whom 
I have previously referred as Bismarck's man in 
Paris, was of a different opinion. I met him at 
the funeral, and he uttered a prophecy which has 
been verified by events: "This," he said, "will be 
productive of a terrific fight for supremacy on the 
part of the Jews. Mark my words, the Jews are 
not going to stand any nonsense. They will pull 
France to pieces first." I thought of this utterance a 
few years afterwards, when Joseph Reinach talked of 
the determination of himself and the other Dreyfusards, 
tout chambarder for the purpose of getting freedom for 
their man. 

This allusion to Joseph Reinach brings me to the 
strange affair of his uncle, the Baron. That was an 
affaire Reinach for a time. It was a month's 

12 



162 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

mystery of Paris, and the death of Baron de Reinach 
led up to the Panama cyclone and caused a Cabinet 
crisis. There were many touches of Greek tragedy 
in the terrible Panama business. The mysterious 
death of Baron de Reinach was one, and the mourn- 
ful downfall of Count Ferdinand de Lesseps was the 
other. The chief impression that I have of the time 
is the pathetic scene at the country house of the 
Count, when he complained of the prolonged absence of 
his son Charles, who had been arrested with Messrs. 
Fontane, Cottu, and Eiffel after the death or suicide 
of Baron de Reinach. The old man, the famous 
canal-planner, was not arrested, but he was included 
in the charges of fraud and violation of the Com- 
panies Act. We all know what happened at this 
time. Deputies were accused of having received 
bribes from the Panama Company, which wanted 
to float a loan. Baron de Reinach was one of the 
distributors of gold, being aided by Arton, alias 
Aaron, a financial adventurer who, with so many 
others connected with the events of this period, 
led a double life, having a quiet, humdrum, highly- 
respectable family in one street and a flaring mistress 
in another. His master. Baron de Reinach, had what 
was termed a buen retiro, or snuggery, in a street 
off the Champs Elys^es, where he kept a dancer of 
the Opera. The campaign against the distributors 
and receivers of Panama cheques was begun in the 
Chamber on November 21, 1892, by M. Delahaye 
of the Right, who declared that three millions of 
francs had been given to over one hundred mem- 
bers of Parliament. A committee was then appointed 
to inquire into the charge. Only a little later M. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 163 

Emile Loubet resigned the Presidency of the Council 
because he would not agree to the exhumation and 
post-mortem examination of the body of Baron 
Jacques de Reinach. There were other incidents 
of which I have a vivid recollection. 

I was in the Chamber of Deputies when its 
President, Charles Floquet, admitted in a falter- 
ing voice that he had taken three hundred thou- 
sand francs from the Panama Company, but, he 
added, it was for the purpose of using it for the 
State. The money had gone in the campaign of 
the Government against Boulanger, but the Right 
and the Nationalists insisted that M. Floquet had 
pickings out of it for himself. 

I was also at the Chamber on those memorable 
occasions when M. Rouvier, Minister of Finance in 
the Loubet Cabinet, had to retire as he was called 
a ** Panamist," when there was a violent agitation 
over the suspension of several Deputies and Ministers, 
and when Paul D^roulede, founder of the League of 
Patriots, boldly denounced Clemenceau as the friend 
of Dr. Cornelius Herz, a wire-puller in the Panama 
affair. 

This scene has been related in different ways. M. 
Clemenceau's friends in England talk of Paul Derou- 
lede as a frenzied fanatic, who made himself the 
laughing-stock of the French Chamber when he 
attacked Clemenceau and coupled him with Dr. 
Cornelius Herz. On the contrary, Paul Derou- 
lede showed great courage at the time. Clemenceau 
had been for years the master, the dominator of the 
Chamber. He was alternately hated, admired, exe- 
crated, and flattered. Accordingly, there was no 



164 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

laughing at Deroulede, however melodramatic he 
may have been in his utterances and gestures. 
There were many of his opponents there who 
secretly applauded his attack on the masterful man 
who was feared and hated. I saw Clemenceau pull- 
ing himself together, and trying to assume an air of 
calmness to bluff the gallery, or rather the galleries. 
It was with suppressed rage that he uttered the words, 
" Monsieur Paul Deroulede, vous en avez menti." 

There was a duel and nobody was hurt. The 
denunciation of Deroulede, however, had its effect. 
The connection of M. Clemenceau with the "sick 
man of Bournemouth," Dr. Herz, who was "wanted" 
so badly during the Panama crisis, had a powerful 
influence on the popular mind. M. Clemenceau was 
out of Parliament for a long time, and had to return to 
his journalistic and literary work. He has certainly 
come to the front again with a vengeance, but he had 
a long time to wait. The strange thing was that 
other men who had been affected by the crisis did not 
remain in the cold shade of oblivion so long as M. 
Clemenceau. M. Rouvier, although said to be steeped 
to the waist in the Panama trouble, was indispensable, 
and had to be recalled to office. M. Loubet, although 
branded as " Panama Loubet " almost daily in the 
Libre Parole, became President of the Republic. 
But M. Clemenceau was forgotten, and the popular 
mind accepted the story of his enemies that he as the 
agent of Cornelius Herz, and M. Rouvier as the man 
most intimate with Baron Jacques de Reinach, caused 
the latter to disappear. The Baron, it was said, was 
offered a pistol by M. Clemenceau, who advised him 
to use it and vanish from earth, where his presence 
was compromising to others. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 165 

In the years to come, all these tragedies of the 
Third Republic, when read of in history, will seem 
like a revival of mediaeval methods in the nineteenth 
century. The " Mysteries of the Third French 
Republic" will make a sensational title for a writer 
of the future. 

There was another man who dared M. Clemenceau 
as well as Paul Deroulede. That was M. Andrieux, 
now dead. Andrieux was a most active and ag- 
gressive politician, and was in all the turmoil of the 
Grevy period. He had a memorable quarrel with 
Jules Ferry in the tribune of the National Assembly 
at Versailles when the revision of the Constitution 
was discussed there in 1884. He had been Am- 
bassador to Madrid and Prefect of Police. During 
the Panama crisis in 1893 Andrieux declared that 
M. Clemenceau had the list of 104 deputies who had 
been bribed, and that he had passed it over to Dr. 
Cornelius Herz. Nothing came of this assertion, but 
M. Andrieux produced an alleged list with a mys- 
terious person marked in it as X. After all, there was 
little revealed about the " Panamists." A banker, M. 
Thierree, declared before the Committee of Inquiry 
that Baron Jacques de Reinach had drawn twenty- 
five cheques. Two of these, of a million francs each, 
were for Dr. Cornelius Herz, and there were two of 
the value of 25,000 francs each for Senators Albert 
Grevy and L6on Renault. A deputy, Antonin Proust, 
was also implicated as having been in a former syn- 
dicate to guarantee the Panama loan of 1886. This 
Antonin Proust was known as a fast liver. He 
frequented the green-room of the Opera, and was 
supposed to be on the very best terms with Rosita 



166 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Mauri, who was then the star ballet-dancer. This 
very ballerina, who is a little dark woman now teach- 
ing her art at the Opera, and by no means a remarkable 
beauty, was supposed to have turned the heads of 
many official persons besides Antonin Proust. I saw 
her in a ballet at this period, and in one scene she had 
to appear balancing an antique pitcher on her head. 
The ballet was appropriate to the events of the time, 
and the wits of the boulevards called the pitchers 
which Mauri and other dancers carried ''^ pots de vin,'' 
in allusion to the bribes received by the " Panamists" 
of the Senate and Chamber. It was thenceforward 
known as the " ballet des pots de vin^ Another man 
who went down in the Panama crisis was M. Baihaut, 
a former Minister, who received a large sum. He 
was known as "the man with the beautiful wife," 
another Marino Faliero ''della bella moglie" Madame 
Baihaut, who had before been ''la belle Madame 
Armangaud,'' was expensive as well as beautiful, and 
took a good deal of keeping. Her husband was 
imprisoned with Blondin, an official of the Credit 
Lyonnais. 

All sorts of people were supposed to have received 
''pots de vin " as well as the senators and deputies. 
Money was freely distributed by Arton, alias Aaron, 
acting for the Panama Company, in newspaper offices. 
M. Hebrard, director of the Temps, was supposed to 
have received about i^8o,ooo. A similar sum was 
said to have been given, and no doubt was, to a 
financier of German origin, who was paid to back the 
Panama Company on the Bourse. In the fanciful list 
published by the Marquis de Mores in the newspaper 
La France later on, men were made to receive so little 



FOETY YEARS OF PARIS 167 

as twenty and thirty pounds. M. de Blowitz was 
currently reported to have '* touched " a cheque for 
£4,000, and a minor Correspondent of an English 
paper was said to have been satisfied with a cheque 
for £40. 

There was commotion when it was boldly asserted 
that Baron Mohrenheim, Russian Ambassador to the 
Third Republic, was among the "pot de vineurs" of 
Panama. I think that the compilers of the fanciful 
list asserted that he had received about ;^20,ooo. No 
notice was taken of the assertions made in the French 
papers, but the Correspondents of foreign journals 
who had reproduced the rumours about the Russian 
Ambassador received notice to quit French territory 
within twenty-four hours. 

The Correspondents expelled were four in number — 
a German, an Italian, a Hungarian, and an English- 
man. I knew only one of them, the German, Herr 
Otto Brandes, who represented the Berliner Tagblatt 
in Paris. Herr Brandes, a tall, good-looking and 
affable Teuton, had been in the German diplomatic 
service, and had fought in the campaign of 1870-71. 
Leaving the diplomatic service, he embarked with 
heart and soul in journalism. I never knew a man so 
enthusiastic about his craft. While he was in Paris 
he carefully attended the Parliamentary debates, and 
his favourite phrase, " Ca se corse,'' when discussion 
was becoming serious in the House, was frequently 
quoted in the Press gallery. He used to equal Herr 
Singer, of the New Free Press and Signor Caponi, 
then of the Tribuna and the Perseveransa, in his 
attention to Parliamentary affairs. More than these, 
however, he watched and reported everything of any 



168 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

interest happening in Paris. He was at all the first 
nights, and I have seen him studying a trumpery show 
opened at Belleville. 

All this was done for the benefit of the readers of 
the Berliner Tagblatt, but Herr Brandes had to pay 
for the echo from Paris about Baron Mohrenheim. 
He and his family were hooted at Asnieres, outside the 
city, where they lived, and the windows of their villa 
were broken. Brandes went to England, to which 
country his wife belongs, and never returned to Paris. 
The Russian Ambassador was thus avenged by the 
French Government. 

Later on came Admiral Avellan and his Muscovites 
from Toulon. The Russian sailors were hugged in 
the streets of Paris, and cynics who hinted that it 
would be well to invite them to a banquet of tallow 
candles were nearly assassinated. It was all " Vive 
la Russie" but there were not wanting Frenchmen 
who reminded the enthusiasts that they would have 
to pay dearly for the friendship of the Tsar. 

Just before the Russians came there was some 
entertainment afforded to the English in Paris by the 
Norton fiasco. M. Millevoye alleged in the Chamber 
that he had proof from correspondence found at the 
British Embassy, and given to him by Norton, a 
coloured man of Mauritius, that several French 
politicians had been bought over by England. M. 
Clemenceau was supposed to have had ;^20,ooo in the 
"deal "with the English Government. All this was 
believed for a time, but the documents were found to 
be as apocryphal as those in the Parnell case. The 
correspondence was forged in the most barefaced, and 
at the same time in the most imbecile, manner. The 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 169 

spelling was atrocious, and some of the allusions to 
persons and events were what an inelegant writer 
called ** cock-eyed." The writers of the spurious 
letters were said to be Mr. Lister and Mr. Lee, of the 
British Embassy. The forgers had evidently taken 
Mr. Lister's name at random, but Mr, Lee, who is now 
Sir H. Austin Lee, K.C.M.G., C.B., was then, as he 
is at present, one of the most familiar figures in Paris 
society. Before he came over to succeed Mr. Carew 
as private secretary of the Earl of Lytton, he had a 
well-filled career. He had been on many Royal 
Commissions, and had acted as private secretary to 
Sir Charles Dilke, Lord E. Fitzmaurice, Mr. James 
Bryce, and Sir J. Ferguson. He is now Councillor 
of Embassy, Commercial Attach^, Resident English 
Director of the Suez Canal Company, and member of 
the Managing Committee of the same. It was this 
high and distinguished official who, according to 
Norton, was writing bad English to a colleague who 
was replying in the same fashion, and making allusions 
to Miss Maud Gonne, who at this time first appeared 
on the Paris horizon. Norton and Ducret of the 
Cocarde were justly punished for their acts.^ 

Some livelier events happened at this time and 
called my attention to the streets again. Senator 
Berenger had protested against a masquerade 
organised in the district near Montmartre by students. 
A procession went round the Moulin Rouge, and a 
woman of the town appeared as a Montmartre Godiva 

* It was not known clearly if M. Millevoye and his friends 
were hoodwinked by Norton or not. There was a theory at the 
time that Norton was only used as a tool by those who wanted 
to raise hush-money by means of the forged documents. 



170 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

on horseback. Some of the students were prosecuted 
for this, and one of the biggest riots that I ever saw 
out of Ireland at election time raged for hours in the 
Latin Quarter. The students rushed along the 
Boulevard Saint Michel destroying everything before 
them. They tore down kiosques, smashed windows, 
and fought the big men of the city police. They were 
no match for these burly constables, who walked over 
them, and soon gained the mastery. A man, not a 
student, was killed by a porcelain matchbox used as a 
missile in a cafe, and this caused more rioting, but the 
police were again victors, as they always are in Paris. 
In the region of la haute politique diplomatists and 
journalists were discussing the Siamese boundary 
question. With this I had nothing to do, but I know 
that it caused my colleague, Mr. Ozanne, many 
journeys to the Embassy and to the French Foreign 
Office. The French Foreign Office was disposed to 
be very reticent in those days when France and 
England were not friendly. There was little to be 
gleaned there about the Siamese question, and Mr. 
Constantine Phipps, then at the British Embassy, was 
the chief informant of the English journalists. The 
tension between France and England at the time was 
indicated to a certain extent by the articles of the 
Hon. G. N. Curzon and of Mr. Demetrius Boulger in 
the Nineteenth Century. Mr. Curzon, whose motto 
is " Salus Indise suprema lex," denounced M. de 
Lanessan, Governor-General of the French Far- 
Eastern settlements, for having sent troops to take 
Stung-Treng and Khong island on the Mekong, by 
virtue of the fact that the French had erected forts in 
the region in 1884. Mr. Boulger, on his side, com- 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 171 

merited on the vanity of the grande nation. The 
matter, fortunately for the hopes of the founders of 
the subsequent entente cordiale, and notably of Sir 
Thomas Barclay, was settled towards the end of 
1893. France and England agreed to an '^ Mtat 
tampon," a ** buffer State," and all danger of collision 
was avoided. The Siam controversy which had 
begun in 1884 between M. Jules Ferry and Lord 
Lyons was ended. 

At this time I lost touch with the Chamber of 
Deputies to a considerable extent. I was not there 
when M. Jaures, the Socialist leader, was beginning 
to make felt his own influence and that of his party. 
I was present, however, when the Anarchist Vaillant 
threw his bomb. I saw the tall, gaunt figure of a 
pale-faced man rise in one of the galleries and fling 
something. There was a flash, then the noise ot 
an explosion, and smoke. No great damage was 
done, but Vaillant was tried and guillotined in 
February, 1894. On February the 12th Emile 
Henry, another Anarchist, threw a bomb in the 
Cafd Terminus, near the Gare Saint Lazare. I was 
at the Theatre Frangais when that happened, and 
heard of it from young Vitu, as he was then, son of 
Auguste Vitu, who for long years was dramatic critic 
of the Figaro, an important post, in which he was 
succeeded by Emmanuel Arene, the Corsican senator, 
who was one of those politicians said to have received 
some of the eggs out of the Panama basket. Emile 
Henry did not do much damage any more than 
Vaillant. He evidently wanted to kill off a few 
of the bourgeois people frequenting the Caf6 
Terminus, where they listened every evening to the 



172 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

music of an indifferent orchestra. Henry, in trying to 
escape, put a few bullets into a policeman, who bravely 
grappled with him and held him until help came. 
The dynamiter, recognised and identified as the man 
who had carried the bomb to the offices of the Carmaux 
Company previously, thus causing the disastrous ex- 
plosion in the police Commissariat of the Rue des 
Bons Enfants, was guillotined on the Place de la 
Roquette by Deibler, who was very busy towards the 
close of 1893 and in the beginning of 1894. 

Before 1893 finished we had the general elections, 
and the deaths occurred of Marshal de MacMahon 
and Charles Gounod. The elections were notable for 
the defeat of the redoubtable M. Clemenceau in the 
Var, and when that event was known in Paris, shouts of 
" A bas les Anglais " were raised. The news came to 
Paris very late from the Var, and I obtained it at the 
office of the Gaulois, where there was undisguised jubila- 
tion over the fall of the man whom the Conservatives 
know as the ''komine sinistre.'' At this period, however, 
the Conservatives had to go into mourning over the 
electoral defeat of the great Catholic champion. Count 
Albert de Mun, descendant of the philosopher Helvetius 
and of Madame de Stael, who was ousted from the 
new Parliament, as well as M. Georges Clemenceau, 
leader of the Radicals. 



CHAPTER XIII 

Death of Marshal MacMahon and Charles Gounod — Death o£ 
Jules Ferry and H. Taine — Max Lebaudy and Liane de 
Pougy — The DeHlahs of the Third RepubHc — The assas- 
sination of President Carnot — His funeral described by 
Clement Scott — President Casimir Perier — Verdi at the 
Opera — French and Italians — M. Casimir Perier's resigna- 
tion—Death of M. Waddington. 

THE Republicans gave grand State funerals to 
Marshal de MacMahon and Charles Gounod, 
both of whom died in the autumn of 1893. The 
Marshal's funeral was the finest military display that 
I have ever seen, with the exception of that at the 
interment of Baron Bauer, an Austrian War Minister, 
who died while I was in Vienna some years back. 
Baron Bauer's funeral was attended by the Emperor 
Francis Joseph. His Majesty walked on foot after 
the mail-clad knight on horseback who followed the 
bier and is known in Vienna as the '* Iron Rider." 
In the cortege were all the variegated uniforms of the 
Austro- Hungarian army. Paris could not show such 
military variety on the occasion of the Marshal's 
funeral, but there were nearly one hundred thousand 
troops out, and these were the dlite of the army. 
The Russian Admiral Avellan and his men joined 
in the funeral of the former President of the Republic, 

173 



174 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

whose body was carried to the crypt of the Hotel des 
Invalides, there to rest with those of the first 
Napoleon and some of his great captains. 

The funeral of Charles Gounod was an artistic one, 
like that of Rossini during the closing days of the 
Second Empire, and that of Ambroise Thomas later 
on. I only saw Gounod once, when he was conduct- 
ing his " Redemption " at the Trocad^ro. This 
oratorio, first heard at the Birmingham Festival in 
1SS2, was one of his great successes, but he was 
a man of many failures. In his old age he was 
very patriarchal in appearance, and when I saw him 
at the Trocad^ro, a few years before his death, his 
face bore traces of melancholy. 

Two other persons of dissimilar careers and of 
great reputation — Jules Ferry and Hippolyte Taine — 
also passed away, but in the earlier part of 1893. 
Their funerals were almost unnoticed, at least by 
the crowd. Ferry had lingered in politics for a time 
as President of the Senate, but he was clean forgotten 
by the people. As for Taine, who killed himself 
by overwork, he was only remembered by scholars 
and literary people when he vanished from the scene 
of his monumental labours. 

Before I close my narrative of events in which 
I was interested and in touch with during 1893, I 
must refer to two persons who were brought into 
prominence that year. One was Max Lebaudy, and 
the other was Madame Liane de Pougy. Max 
Lebaudy was brought out owing to his extravagant 
expenditure. The ''pe^i^ sucrier," suhsequGiitly known 
as the " millionaire conscript," inherited part of the 
six millions of francs left by his father, the sugar 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 175 

king of Paris. Max set steadily to work to get 
through his share of the paternal estate, when his 
mother, Madame Lebaudy, interfered and he was 
put into the hands of a conseil judiciaire which 
was to check his prodigality. While Max was 
spending a few millions of francs his mother, whose 
efforts to have a conseil judiciare appointed were 
frustrated, was living on a few hundreds, and would 
hardly go to the expense of keeping a maidservant. 
To Max Lebaudy I shall have to refer later on, 
as he again came out prominently when he had to 
join the army as the " millionaire conscript." 

Madame Liane de Pougy began to be heard of 
in November, 1893, when one of her suivantes, an 
acute woman, tried to blackmail the Marquis de 
MacMahon, grand-nephew of the Marshal-President. 
The Marquis, a full-blooded man of thirty-six or 
thirty-seven, was one of Liane de Pougy 's earliest 
adorers. He spent large sums of money on her 
upkeep, and her servant tried to get more out of 
him. There was a lawsuit, and as far as I can 
remember the Marquis paid a good deal to get out 
of the affair. 

Liane de Pougy I first saw in a box at the 
Opera Comique. Her hair was then dark and 
she wore a tiara of diamonds. Afterwards she 
dyed her head and seemed a blonde. Under either 
flag she is, or rather was, a most beautiful woman, 
more beautiful even than the " belle Madame 
Gauthereau'' of the eighties. Madame de Pougy 
was originally married to a naval officer, from whom 
she was soon separated. I saw her with various 
men from time to time, and she must have had 



176 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

dozens of admirers and adorers, among those best 
known being the Marquis de MacMahon, Max 
Lebaudy, and M. Bischoffsheim. Young men and 
old crowded around her. Younger sons robbed 
their fathers and mothers and borrowed heavily for 
her, as was done in the case of Cora Pearl during 
the Second Empire. This, too, has been done for 
Madame de Pougy's rivals in beauty, Emilienne 
d'AlenQon, who was connected with some of the 
" Panamists," the " beautiful Otero," *' la belle 
Cassive,'' of the shapely limbs, formerly of the Folies 
Dramatiques and then of the Theatre des Nouveaut^s 
on the Boulevard des Italiens, at whose feet the 
impecunious son of a prominent Republican politician 
shot himself a few years since. The affair happened 
at Lyons, where the lady had gone to fulfil a 
professional engagement. I think that Liane de 
Pougy was far superior to any of these by birth, 
and her beauty in youth was of a more refined type 
than theirs. She imitated them in going on the 
music-hall stage in order to display her charms to 
the best advantage and to make more money, as her 
train de vie was enormously expensive. It was 
reported at one time that she was about to marry 
that erratic half-genius Jean Lorrain, the man of 
many rings, who wrote short plays for her, and who 
died only recently, of spinal decay. I do not know 
if Madame de Pougy ever entertained this notion, 
but had Lorrain lived and the marriage taken place, 
the union of two such strange creatures could not 
have lasted many months. Madame de Pougy gets 
well advertised and kept before the public owing to 
the numerous accidents which happen to her. Once 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 177 

she pretended to take poison and was ill for some 
weeks. Some time after her horses were stolen, and 
in October, 1906, she was slightly injured in a street 
accident. The English newspapers referred to the 
affair under the attractive heading " Paris Beauty 
Run Over." 

Anarchists, as we only too well know, were again 
prominent and murderous in the year 1894. I find 
from my notes that the first explosion of the year 
took place at Foyot's restaurant, close to the 
Luxembourg and the Senate. By a strange irony 
of circumstances, at Foyot's on the evening of the 
explosion in April, 1894, was the "literary Anarchist " 
Laurent Tailhade. He was dining with a young 
person of interesting appearance when the dynamiter 
loomed up at a window and laid his bomb on the 
sill. The explosive was not intended for Tailhade, 
but for any bourgeois cossu who might be dining at 
Foyot's, which is a noted place for good cooking and 
good wine. The dynamiter would no doubt have 
been glad to see dozens of bourgeois blown up ; but 
as it was, he only broke the window and nearly 
blinded for life a literary man who affected to be in 
sympathy with Anarchy, and who admitted recourse 
to " the resources of civilisation," as the Fenian 
dynamiters used to say. 

This extraordinary man Tailhade, who was the 
author of the phrase ''que le geste soil beau,'' or that 
anything is admissible when done with a fine move- 
ment, has of recent times abjured what he formerly 
adored. After having descended so low as the 
anarchist sheet the Libertaire, we found him 

13 



178 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

"weeping on the waistcoat" of M. Arthur Meyer, 
and writing articles for the fashionable and Conserva- 
tive Gaulois. He went in, as a matter of fact, 
among the men whom he had so often branded in 
his fierce, tortuous, and tormented prose. There 
has been no style in French literature so strange as 
that of Tailhade, except, to a certain extent, that 
of Jean Lorrain. But the latter was comparatively 
subdued and refined, whereas Tailhade is brutally 
realistic. I have never read anything more vigorous 
and terrible than the following passages on Paris 
of the past. They are from Tailhade's series of 
articles '* Les Reflets de Paris," and are well worthy 
of quotation : "II est commun, poncif, rebattu, et 
meme journalistique, dans les matins oii somnole une 
verve collabescente, de dire adieu au pittoresque et 
de lamenter ce qui fut le Paris d'autrefois. Jardins 
moribonds, architectures desuetes, carrefours assainis, 
boites a locataires et cages a punaises, les murailles 
antiques paraissent, un moment avec leurs papiers 
deteints, leurs portes crevees, leurs escaliers beants, 
avec les taches innomables qu'ont faites a leurs 
parois cinq cents ans d'humanit^, puis branlent au 
coup de pioche et croulent dans un hourvari soudain, 
parmi les nuages de poussiere et les cataractes de 
platras. Ici des generations defuntes ont v6cu la vie, 
ont aime, ont souffert ; des vieillards se sont endormis 
dans la paix du neant, des meres ont rhythme d'une 
chanson inquiete le souffle des berceaux. L'adultere 
a gravi ces marches derobees ; des etreintes d'amour 
et des spasmes de mort ont fait vibrer ces murs 
deserts, ces demeures profanees. Pulvis et umbra 
sumus." 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 179 

Nor is Tailhade tender towards his contemporaries. 
Of the poet Verlaine, " LeHan, poor Lelian," who died 
in 1896, he wrote : " Verlaine, si admire, si admirable, 
encore que lourdement surfait, traina aux bras de son 
ami Cazals I'alcoolisme et la vermine de ses derniers 
ans. Malgre le prestige de la gloire, malgre I'esprit 
delicieux des moments lucides, on ne pouvait aimer 
cette loque de poete qu'avec un mouchoir sous 
le nez." 

Of Edouard Drumont he wrote : "Ce petit employe 
de I'Hotel de Ville en 1867, a garde la crasse 
insaponifable des bureaux." This is Drumont the 
unsoapable, with his face dUgoutier, and his 
" barbe hospitaliere qui consternera d'envie, parmi 
les bien heureux, le pediculaire Benoit Labre." 
Maurice Barres, genial man as he is, has not escaped 
the lash of the terrible Tailhade. The author of 
" Les Deracines," " L'Appel au Soldat," and " Leurs 
Figures " is reproached for his personal appearance, 
notably " son dos circonfiexe, sa voix dure et seche 
d'eunuque, sa jaunisse d'envieux, ses dents a pivots, 
son air emprunte de cuistre qui met pour la premiere 
fois les pieds dans un salon." And again, his 
" cheveux plats de sacristain, nez crochu, oreilles telles 
un rebord de pot de chambre, avec je ne sais quoi de 
godiche et de constipe qui fait songer a un foetus en 
rupture de bocal." 

Of Francois Coppee, Academician, poet and 
converted sinner, Tailhade wrote: "Coppee a qui 
ses infirmites et sa haute devotion impartirent le 
sobriquet d' Agnus Dei." 

Of Christianity this fearful man wrote, before he 
threw himself into the arms of Arthur Meyer: " Le 



180 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Christianlsme invent^ par les esclaves a ravale jusqu'a 
la plus honteuse barbaric le monde greco-romain 
effacant tout vestige de raison et de beaute, at a 
pose sur I'univers, comme une chape de plomb, son 
manteau de folie et de laideur." 

Tailhade, after he recovered from his injuries 
received at Foyot's restaurant, returned to his literary 
and journalistic work, and had to go to prison for 
some time by reason of his inflammatory articles in 
the violent newspapers of the Anarchists. The latter 
desisted for some time from frightening the public, 
and all went on smoothly until that Sunday, the 24th 
of June, 1894, when President Carnot was assassinated 
at Lyons by the Italian Anarchist Caserio Santo. 
This murderer was supposed to be avenging the 
rigorous action of the French Government towards 
Italian workmen in salt mines in the South of 
France. Caserio may have also been influenced by 
French Anarchists who had a desire to revenge the 
dynamiters who had been sent to the guillotine. 

The news came late to Paris on that Sunday night. 
We in the office of the Telegraph first heard of it 
from the policemen at the Bourse. The confirmation 
came from the newspaper offices and the Elysee, 
where the terrible news had been broken to Madame 
Carnot and her sons. On the following Sunday 
the murdered President was accorded one of the most 
magnificent funerals ever seen in Paris. The late 
Clement Scott wrote of it, in his own style, that "it 
was roses, roses all the way." The funeral wreaths 
were immense, and came from all parts, denoting 
the popular feeling over the act of the Anarchist. 
Clement Scott was over with Mr. Le Sage, the late 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 181 

W. Beatty-Kingston, and Mr. Bennett Burleigh to 
write up the funeral, which filled nearly two pages 
of the Telegraphy about seven men in all being on 
the task. 

Mr. Bennett Burleigh was over chiefly to keep an 
eye on anything exceptional that might happen. 
All sorts of things had been expected — revolution, 
dynamite bombs, more assassinations of public 
personages, but nothing occurred. 

M. Casimir Perier was quietly elected on the 27th 
of June, 1894, and he walked in the funeral of his 
murdered predecessor. This was courageous enough 
on the part of the new President, whose squat, thick- 
set form was noticeable in front of the chief mourners 
and was a mark for bomb or bullet. 

A few days more and all was forgotten. President 
Carnot was placed near his grandfather, whose remains 
had been brought from Magdeburg for interment in 
the Pantheon. Caserio Santo was guillotined in 
August, 1894, and the deed perpetrated at Lyons 
passed into history. It is wonderful how soon the 
French, nowadays, recover from shocks, alarms, 
surprises, and crises. Time was when the whole 
nation vibrated over the least thing — the fall of a 
Cabinet, for instance. But they went on as usual 
after President Carnot's assassination, which had been 
preceded by menaces of foreign war, the Panama 
crisis, and many changes of Ministry. This apparent 
apathy of the French nation has been attributed by 
some observers from abroad to the fact that the 
people know full well that, whatever may happen, the 
administration of the country will go on. It will 
be controlled by the Chamber, which has more power 



182 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

in this respect than the House of Commons. The 
bureaux of the Chamber are not only Boards of 
Inquiry but real and influential administrative com- 
mittees. There is a good deal of truth in all this. 
The French people are, no doubt, confident that 
whatever may happen in the way of a financial 
scandal, a political assassination, or a Cabinet crisis, 
the affairs of the country will be In good hands. 
But there was another reason, and that was pre- 
dominant in Carnot's time, more perhaps than it is 
now, when a younger generation has come on the 
scene. It was this, that the French people, and 
especially the Parisians and residents in departments 
bordering on and not far from the metropolis, had 
suffered so severely from the effects of the great 
upheaval of 1870-71, that they desired peace and 
quiet at any price. 

Great things were hoped from the new President, 
Casimir Perier, whom I saw at close quarters in the 
Opera on the night of the first performance in Paris 
of Verdi's " Otello," which had been produced about 
a year or two before at the Scala in Milan. I had 
the good fortune to attend both the dress rehearsal 
and ih^ premiere of " Otello." At the dress rehearsal 
I was quite close to the maestro Giuseppe Verdi, 
then making his last visit to Paris. The scene was 
most interesting to me as well as to the others who 
were privileged to witness it. Verdi sat at a table in 
what may be termed the pit of the Opera, the usual 
seats being cleared away. Near the Italian composer 
were seated M. Sardou and M. Gailhard, manager 
of the Op6ra. It was during this rehearsal that Verdi, 
referring to Madame Rose Caron, said *' Ho trovato 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 183 

la mia Desdemona." At \he premiere of " Otello," 
next evening, President and Madame Casimir-Perier 
were in their box and Verdi, amid great clapping of 
hands and shouting of " Vwes," appeared in a box 
near the stage, wearing the grand cordon of the 
Legion of Honour. 

There was a rift in the lute, however. Public 
opinion was then dead against the Italians owing to 
the rioting in the South of France salt mines and 
to the assassination of the unlucky President Carnot. 
Accordingly there were those at the Op^ra that night 
who murmured at the honours conferred on Verdi 
arid depreciated his music. French composers present 
were jealous and sneered at Verdi's best effects as 
claptrap. Nothing pleased them, not even the 
splendid singing of Alvarez and of Rose Caron, who 
was especially impressive in the closing scenes of 
the opera of " Otello." 

One of the most acrid of Verdi's critics was that 
now vanished wit and boulevardier, Aurdien Scholl. 
I sat next to him in the orchestral stalls, and when 
I applauded Alvarez in the "Farewell for ever" 
scene, Scholl scowled at me through his eyeglass, 
that monocle once so well known at Tortoni's and 
at Bignon's, and said : " What are you doing that 
for.-^ Why, man, it's all claptrap, and only fit for a 
beuglant. They wouldn't stand it in a third-class 
music-hall." This was overheard by old Signor 
Caponi, correspondent of the Perseveranza and 
other Italian papers, who was near. Caponi almost 
wept for joy over the reception given to his far 
more distinguished fellow-countryman, and as he 
heard SchoH's bitter remarks he shook his head, 



184 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

whereupon the Frenchman took pity on him and said 
good-humouredly : "Eh bien, mon vieux Caponi etes- 
vous content, hein?" and the old ex-Carbonaro smiled 
faintly. Caponi was still living when I left Paris, and 
seemed destined to go on for years in his lonely 
bachelorhood. He outlived poor Scholl, who died 
a few years ago. 

Scholl had been married to the daughter of an 
English brewer, and was divorced from her. They 
did not live together so long as Count Boni de 
Castellane and Jay Gould's daughter, and Scholl was 
supposed to have ;^i,ooo a year from the brewer 
as peace money. 

After that night at the Opera President Casimir 
Perier's star began to wane. The hopes entertained 
of him declined. The Moderate Republicans, to 
whose party he belonged, were overborne by 
Radicals and Socialists. A Socialist had been 
returned for the President's own borough of Nogent- 
sur-Seine. Then ensued the death of Auguste 
Burdeau, President of the Chamber of Deputies, 
who was Casimir Perier's best friend, and over 
whose dead body he wept. Next came the trial 
of Captain Dreyfus, in December, 1894, and the 
sentence passed on him angered not only his co- 
religionists, but also the Socialists who were 
opposed to the Army. These, known as Anti- 
Militarists, made a good deal of noise over the 
sentence on M. Dreyfus and upbraided the President 
of the Republic for having given way to the War 
Office staff. 

Towards the close of 1894 the Socialists renewed 
their attacks on the President of the Republic. Their 




Jean Casimir-Perier. 



To face t,. 185. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 185 

newspapers were venomous and talked of raising 
ghosts or skeletons. It was thought that there 
was about to be another big scandal, or crop of 
scandals. And all this time Madame Casimir Perier 
was being terrified almost out of existence by the 
dozens of threatening letters from Anarchists as 
well as from scandalmongers and blackmailers which 
were reaching the Elys^e every day. 

We had the news of President Casimir Perier's 
resignation on the night of January 15, 1895, and 
were rather staggered by it. The country, as usual, 
bore it well, and it was in reality only the politicians 
and the journalists who were excited. The man in 
the street, and even the publicans or marchands de vin 
in the street, did not care a button about the resigna- 
tion of the President of the Republic. 

M. Casimir Perier stated that he resigned as the 
Chamber of Deputies had refused to sanction the 
separation of the powers, that is to say, the separation 
of its own authority and the authority of the Council 
of State. This question had been discussed in the 
Chamber on January 14, 1895, ^"^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^ 
fall of the Dupuy Cabinet. The discussion was 
over the guarantee of interest payable by the State 
to the Orleans and the Midi Railway Companies. 
The Council of State decided that the guarantee 
should be payable until 1956, the end of the period 
of concession, and not until 19 14, as the Government 
wished. M. Millerand, a Socialist, subsequently 
known facetiously as the " Baron," proposed during 
the discussion that M. Raynal, a former Minister 
who had carried through the negotiations with the 
railway companies, should be prosecuted for criminal 



186 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

neglect. The House agreed to a committee being 
formed for the investigation of this matter. M. Raynal, 
be it noted, was Minister of the Interior when 
M. Casimir Perier was President of the Council 
of Ministers, or Premier, from November, 1893, to 
May, 1894. ^^ that Cabinet, too, were M. Burdeau, 
M. Spuller, author of the celebrated phrase about 
resprit nouveau — the new spirit, which was to be one 
of toleration, and which gave hope to the Catholics, 
and General Mercier, who was so prominent during 
the Dreyfus agitation. 

After M. Millerand had called for the prosecution 
of M. Raynal, another deputy, M. Trelat, brought 
forward an order of the day that the Chamber 
respected the principle of the separation of powers, 
that is to say, of its own authority and of the 
authority of the Council of State. The Government 
endorsed this, but the House rejected it, and 
M. Casimir Perier seized it as his motive for wishing 
to leave the Elys^e. This principle of the separation 
of powers he described in his message as the founda- 
tion-stone of every liberal regime. He added that 
he did not wish, nor had he power in the absence 
of a voted budget, to ask the Senate for the 
dissolution of a Chamber which, through its political 
impotence, ran the risk of becoming revolutionary. 
Finally, M. Casimir Perier said that he had hoped 
the Presidency of the Republic would have been 
defended by those who had urged him to accept it, 
but it was not. His friends, his troops in fact, had 
made common cause with the Socialists. 

Thus went out the President who had given such 
hope on his election — and no wonder. He came of 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 187 

a family of political eminence. His grandfather was 
Prime Minister, to use the English term, in 1831, 
and his father, who died in 1876, was Minister 
of the Interior under M. Thiers. He himself, when 
President of the Council of Ministers, seemed to be 
a strong man with a will of his own and great 
determination. But the ''■ paperassiers,'' whom Roche- 
fort had denounced in his own case, and the 
Socialists had proved too much for him. 

M. Casimir Perier, now dead, led the life of a 
private gentleman, sometimes in Paris and some- 
times in his country residence at Nogent-sur-Seine. 
He crossed the Channel occasionally with his son. 
In fine weather he was often met bicycling with his 
son along country roads and lunching at a wayside 
inn, although he was one of the richest men in France. 

Many French notabilities passed away during the 
closing months of President Carnot's tenure of office, 
and also during the short stay of M. Casimir Perier 
at the Elys^e. M. Waddington, son of English 
parents who had adopted French nationality, and 
who was English to the French, although they had 
him as a Cabinet Minister and an ambassador, died in 
January, 1894. I saw him once at the residence 
of Campbell Clarke, who was a friend of his. 
M. Waddington was first married to a French lady. 
Mademoiselle Lutteroth, and next to an American, 
Miss Mary Alsopp King. Among others whom I have 
seen and known a little, and who died in 1894, were 
Leonlde Leblanc, the friend once of the Due 
d'Aumale, who died In February, 1894 ; Count 
Ferdinand de Lesseps ; and M. Burdeau. Leonlde 
Leblanc was a labourer's daughter, who, although she 



188 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

had not passed through the Conservatoire, entered the 
Comedie FranQaise through the influence of her 
ducal admirer. Late in Hfe she fell in with a rich 
"Panamist," who when he once talked of sitting where 
the Due d'Aumale used to sit in the old time, was 
scornfully reminded by the actress, then getting old, 
that he had only taken over the Duke's leavings. 



CHAPTER XIV 

Leonide Leblanc and her rivals — Auguste Burdeau's career — 
Madame Alboni and her gendarme — The passing of the 
" Reptiles " — The Madagascar expedition — Rochefort's 
return from Portland Place — A famous couturier's career — 
Charles Worth of Lincolnshire — His Royal and Imperial 
patrons — His methods of work and his prices — Death of 
Dumas the Second — A theatrical funeral — Max Lebaudy's 
sad end — The Vampires — The romance of Armand 
Rosenthal. 

THIS Leonide Leblanc, whom I saw buried in 
February, 1894, was one of the most fascinating 
women of her time. Her decline was darkened by 
the success of younger and more aggressive women, 
such as Madame Liane de Pougy, Armande Cassive 
(for whom foolish young Bixio shot himself, as young 
Duval had done for Cora Pearl), Cleo de Merode, who 
riveted the momentary attention of a monarch, and 
four or five others who were, and are still, to a certain 
extent, the favourites of millionaires. All these, 
however beautiful, were eclipsed by the stately and 
statuesque actress who was the " amie " of the Due 
d'Aumale. Intellectually she rose high above any 
of them, and she was similarly superior to Cora Pearl 
the horsey and to another woman of the Second 
Empire, Marguerite Bellanger, who in her decline 
married a petty officer of the British Navy. And 

189 



190 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

yet Leonide Leblanc was only a labourer's daughter. 
The vanity of earthly things came home to me as 
I saw her thinly attended funeral going slowly 
towards Pere La Chaise on that dull day in February, 
1894. Auguste Burdeau, to whose death I have 
referred in the previous chapter, was like Leonide 
Leblanc in this, that he came from nothing. His 
father was a workman, and he himself was appren- 
ticed to a weaver in Lyons, where he was born, in 
1 85 1. A studious boy, he was noticed by somebody, 
and was sent to Paris, where he won a prize for 
philosophy in 1870. He fought in the war and was 
wounded, became subsequently a professor of philo- 
sophy, and entered Parliament in 1885. He acquired 
a reputation for financial ability, reported on the 
extension of the Charter of the Bank of France, and 
had a memorable lawsuit with Edouard Drumont, 
who accused him of being in the pay of the 
Rothschilds. Burdeau died as President of the 
Chamber of Deputies in December, 1894. His wife 
died in 1896, watched, it was said, to the last by 
secret service spies who were supposed to be after the 
papers — that is to say, the compromising letters, if 
any — left by her husband. The lady was born in 
Chili, and had Irish blood in her veins. Her first 
husband was a M. Burdeau also, being the brother 
of the politician. The latter married her after she 
came to Paris in her widowhood and without much 
money, as her husband, who had been a commercial 
traveller, had little to leave her. 

Count Ferdinand de Lesseps died, like M. Burdeau, 
in the last month of 1894. His passing attracted 
as little notice as did that of the Comte de Paris, 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 191 

who died in exile. The Comte de Paris was suffering 
from cancer, and it is also supposed that his death 
was hastened by the Boulangist agitation, in which 
many of his adherents had joined. By a strange 
circumstance, I heard of the death of the Comte de 
Paris in September, 1894, before any of the French 
or English journalists. I was calling on a famous 
star of the Opera, who was to give me a special 
portrait of herself to be published in an illustrated 
paper mainly devoted to reproducing photographs of 
actresses, singers, and ballet-dancers. The ballerina 
whose portrait I was to receive was under the 
patronage of one of the most prominent Royalists, 
who paid for her fiat, her carriage and horses, and 
her coals. He happened to be in the place when I 
called and communicated the news to his '' chere 
amie,'' who told me about the Count's death. I must 
say that the ''■ chere amie,'" and also her venerable 
mother, spoke of the loss to the Royalist party with 
great feeling, and the older lady wept. 

Reference to the Opera reminds me that the year 
1894 likewise saw the death of that great singer 
Madame Alboni. This lady died in Paris, where she 
had lived so long. She passed away in the same 
month that President Carnot was assassinated at 
Lyons. She had been first married to the Marquis 
of Pepoli, and her second husband was a Major 
Zieger, a stalwart Alsatian who belonged to the Paris 
Municipal Guards, and used to be known as 
" Alboni's gendarme." In remembrance, no doubt, 
of her husband's connection with the Municipal 
Guards, Madame Alboni left a large sum of money 
in her will to City of Paris charities, controlled by the 
" Assistance Publique " department. 



192 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

There also vanished from life's busy scene at this 
period Herr Ludwig Cramer, a strange personality, 
not French, but German. Cramer, who was long 
Correspondent in Paris of the Cologne Gazette, 
was at one time the most hated foreigner domiciled 
in France. He was supposed to be, like Beckmann, 
to whom I have already referred, one of the principal 
spies of Bismarck, as well as one of the most active 
representatives of the so-called " reptile Press." 
Cramer could not have an office in Paris through fear 
of the mob getting at him, especially in those days 
when the people were still excited over Alsace- 
Lorraine, and went about on the day of the national 
fete smashing the windows of brasseries wherein 
German beer was sold. In lieu of an office the 
Correspondent of the Cologne Gazette went to a 
cafe to do his work, and spent twenty francs daily in 
the establishment. To his surprise one evening, the 
lar.dlord of the place gave him notice to quit, being 
afraid, as he said, lest the patriots should wreck the 
place when they knew that M. Cramer was there. 
Accordingly Cramer had to go to all sorts of hole- 
and-corner places to conduct his correspondence. He 
never appeared at the Chamber of Deputies or at 
public functions, but put forward to represent him at 
such places a diminutive German gentleman with 
a face resembling that of Charles XH. of Sweden, 
as seen in pictures of that famous king and 
warrior. This deputy, a most harmless and in- 
offensive man, was known as the Baron de Scheidlein. 
He went regularly to the Chamber of Deputies, where 
he had a large scroll of paper before him, on which 
he generally had to inscribe but the mere fact of the 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 193 

German Ambassador's attendance at the debates. 
This used to engender mirth and jokes in the 
"tribune" or box allotted to the foreign Press, and 
the " baron " was frequently reminded, with irony, that 
the Ambassador was in his seat. Von Scheidlein 
never seemed to mind the jokes. He booked the 
presence of the Ambassador calmly, and went on 
looking into the Chamber from his height. The 
" baron " was for a long time Secretary of the 
Foreign Press in Paris, but it brought him little 
prestige. It was doubtful if he could do anything 
for the press but the poorest "reportage." No one 
ever saw anything signed by him in German papers, 
and he always looked a crushed, resigned man who 
had no chance of distinguishing himself His lot was 
made worse by the French, who attributed to him 
every slip perpetrated by the printers of the Cologne 
Gazette. Thus for years he and Cramer too, in an 
indirect way, were saddled with the enormous gaffe in 
the description of a great funeral in Paris, which 
appeared in their paper. This was that " Monsieur 
Corbillard " walked at the head of the cortege. For 
long years the French indulged in this " Corbillard " 
joke, and the Cologne Gazette men were represented 
as having taken a hearse for a man, as somebody else 
did with the Piraeus. 

Baron de Scheidlein disappeared from Paris soon 
after Cramer's death. I believe that Cramer, when 
he broke down, was generously assisted by the 
Countess Marie Muenster. His end was sad, and 
not unlike that of some other correspondents of the 
foreign Press in Paris, who have passed away far 
from relatives, and from real friends, and lacking 

14 



194 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

funds to pay for medical assistance and for medicines. 
This, I have been told, happened in the case of a 
most able writer, a lady, who died a few years ago 
in Paris. She had written many volumes, had cor- 
responded for newspapers, and her work occasionally 
appeared in the leading reviews published in London. 
She died in her prime, full of promise never destined 
to be realised. 

Two writers of a far different kind disappeared 
likewise towards the end of 1894, but not into the 
tomb. They had to " leave their country for their 
country's good." One was Edouard Portalis, and 
the other his sometime assistant, Raoul Canivet. 
I knew these men, especially Canivet, who was one 
of the most entertaining of Frenchmen. 

He was a roturier, but Portalis was of high 
lineage, and was supposed to have got through a 
large fortune. He took to journalism, wrote splendid 
articles, but not being able to earn sufficient money 
for his numerous needs, he tried to blackmail the 
proprietors of clubs where it was supposed that 
gambling went on. This led to his prosecution. 
Canivet was in the same boat, and was also the 
recipient of private and confidential State documents 
from M. de Lanessan, who was recalled from the 
Far East in December, 1894. That has not hurt 
M. de Lanessan, who is to the front again in politics, 
whereas Canivet has disappeared. Canivet when 
managing the Paris, an afternoon paper, was 
strongly backing M. de Lanessan's go-ahead policy 
as regards Siam. 

During the earlier part of 1895, soon after the 
election of President Felix Faure, the haute politique 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 195 

predominated for a time, and foreign correspondents 
were chiefly engaged watching developments after 
England backed out of joining Russia, France and 
Germany in the matter of the claims of the victorious 
Japs, who had crushed their neighbours the Chinese. 
The three powers just mentioned had protested 
against the Shimonoseki Treaty ; but nothing came 
of this, and the Far East began to be forgotten — 
comparatively so, at least, until the ruder awakening 
of the great conflict in which the Russians, the 
friends and allies of France, met at the hands of the 
terrible Japs the same fate as the Chinese. 

In this year also the French were occupied with 
the Expedition to Madagascar, which ended with 
the capture of Antananarivo by General Duchesne's 
troops in September, 1895. Some attempts were 
made in Paris to get up enthusiasm over the depar- 
ture of a rather large body of troops from the capital 
for the seat of so-called war. There was little 
enthusiasm, however. 

The days were over when departures of soldiers 
evoked popular acclamation and made Parisians 
generous in their distributions of wine, food, and 
tobacco to the disappearing heroes. The soldiers 
whom I saw in 1895 starting from Paris seemed 
to march towards Madagascar with the utmost apathy, 
and many of them looked melancholy as they thought, 
no doubt, of the prospect in store for them in a far- 
off, unknown country, where they might have to 
leave their bones, "poor beggars, their bones." 

Henri Rochefort came back to Paris from London, 
under the amnesty law, while preparations for the 
expedition to Madagascar were being pushed forward. 



196 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

The grey-headed Mephistopheles of French politics — 
for he looks like the diabolical tempter of Doctor 
Faustus — reached the Gare du Nord on Sunday 
evening, February 3, 1894. His friends and followers 
turned out in large numbers to meet him. Nearly 
all the Nationalists and Boulangists were there. 
Maurice Barres, novelist and deputy, was a prominent 
figure, and Ernest Roche, faithful disciple of the 
master, went tearing through the streets in the 
master's carriage, shouting and stirring up the 
enthusiasm of the mob. Only Rochefort's bitterest 
enemies were sorry to see the man back in his old 
haunts after his exile, however comfortable, in Port- 
land Place. That exile, after all, was in reality 
pleasant enough, for Rochefort, if he regretted the 
Bois and the boulevards, often found enjoyment in 
London. He used to drive in grand style through 
Bond Street and Piccadilly. I once saw him, delighted 
as a boy, in a gondola at the Exhibition in South 
Kensington where Venice was reproduced. He had 
two ladies with him, one of whom was, I think, 
Madame Adam, the old friend whose money assisted 
him after his escape from the French penal settle- 
ments in New Caledonia. On his return to Paris 
from London, Rochefort resumed his old life, varying 
his light literary work by the customary excursions 
to the races and to the auction-rooms of the Rue 
Drouot. He also wrote his Memoirs, but I do not 
think that they attracted much attention, for the 
reason that they had all been discounted before. 
Rochefort's adventurous and agitated life had been 
too frequently written about, and that with copious- 
ness of detail, to make his memoirs seem fresh. He 







Henri Rochefort. 



To face p. 197. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 197 

has certainly been one of the most curious figures 
of the nineteenth century. He is still, in the new 
era, attracting a fair share of attention as a long- 
lived celebrity of Paris who is at every fete and 
function, looking fresh and fit enough, notwithstand- 
ing the inroads of time. Some years back, when 
he had that notable newspaper duel with Madame 
S^verine, whom he taunted with being the inannite^ 
or nourishing-pot, of Labruyere, a once famous jour- 
nalist and duellist, the lady retorted by describing 
Rochefort as having one foot in the grave and 
being a decrepit, wasted old man. This was a false 
description, particularly at the time, for Rochefort 
was then as full of life and go as ever he was. Late 
in life Rochefort, who has had at least two families of 
children, married a Belgian lady, Mademoiselle Ver- 
voort, whose brother uttered that famous dictum, 
already quoted, that there are two classes of journalists, 
one for the dead dogs and one for good business. I 
first saw this lady at Versailles Assembly, where she 
was with Rochefort in 1884, on the occasion of the 
debates over the proposed revision of the Constitu- 
tion. She was always dressed perfectly, but I do 
not know if she went to Worth or not. She could 
hardly have done so in 1884, if she partook of Roche- 
fort's antipathy to the English ; for Worth, it will be 
remembered, was an Englishman. That antipathy 
on the part of Rochefort lasted until he was in exile 
in London after the Boulangist fiasco. When he 
returned to Paris he had lost it. 

Mention of Worth recalls to me the fact that this 
celebrated couturier died in March, 1895. I saw 
him once at his rooms in the Rue de la Paix. I had 



198 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

been attending the marriage of the daughter of 
Baron and Baroness Gustave de Rothschild with 
Baron Leonino of Milan, a relative. It took place 
in the Synagogue of the Rue de la Victoire, near 
the bank of the Rothschilds in the Rue Laffitte, and 
was a very magnificent affair. All Paris, and all 
London as well, was interested in it. As I wanted 
to say something in my account of the wedding rela- 
tive to the dresses of the bride and the bridesmaids, 
which had been designed by the renowned M. Worth, 
I went to see that gentleman. He kindly volunteered 
to send one of his leading ladies to help me in the 
delicate matter at issue, but having subsequently 
communicated with Baroness Gustave de Rothschild 
on the subject, a peremptory order came from that 
lady, forbidding any mention of her daughter's 
wedding garment in newspapers. M. Worth was 
very sorry, and so was I. I never saw him any more. 
He died in his villa at Suresnes, outside Paris, 
leaving; his orreat business to his sons. 

Charles Worth was born at Bourne, in Lincolnshire, 
and was the son of a solicitor, who did not prosper in 
life. In 1838 young Worth was apprenticed to 
Messrs. Swan & Edgar, and about seven years later 
was in Paris, employed in the shop of one Gagolin, 
a silk mercer. In joint partnership with a Swede, 
Charles Worth, of Bourne, took the place in the 
Ru de la Paix which has had empresses, queens, 
and princesses among its patrons and frequenters. 
He was first patronised by Russian grand-duchesses, 
chiefly, I should think, through the instrumentality of 
his Swedish partner. The firm also began to be 
noticed in the newspapers, and then came the Empress 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 199 

Eugenie, Princess Metternich and the ladies of the 
Tuileries. Those were days of splendour and luxury, 
but Worth never lost his head. He was a votary of 
the simple life, or was at any rate what the Irish would 
call a " fine, honest, decent, respectable man," who was 
domesticated and brought up a family. I have heard 
that he distinguished himself greatly by inventing a 
walking dress composed of a short skirt and a jacket 
of the same material. 

Not very long before he died Worth made the 
following rather interesting statements about his work 
and his patrons : " Those ladies are wisest who leave 
the choice to us. By so doing they are always better 
pleased in the end, and the reputation of the house is 
sustained. Curiously enough, the persons who realise 
this fact most clearly are precisely those whom you 
might fancy the most difficult to please. For example, 
a telegram comes from the Empress of Russia, * Send 
me a dinner dress ! ' Nothing more. We are left 
absolute freedom as to style and material. Not that 
the Empress is indifferent in the matter of dress. 
Quite the contrary. She will sometimes require that 
all the ladies' costumes at a certain ball be pink, or 
red, or blue. And her own dresses are always master- 
pieces of elegance. The point is that she trusts our 
judgment rather than her own. In the same way 
recently we have received over twenty telegrams from 
Madrid for ball dresses, and we shall make them up as 
we think fit. We can finish a costume in twenty-four 
hours. French ladies have ordered a dress in the 
morning and have danced in it at night. I once made 
a gown for the Empress Eugenie in three hours and a 
half That would not, of course, do for elaborate work. 



200 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

It often takes weeks to complete an embroidered 
gown. For the Coronation of the Tsar and Tsaritsa 
we had to make a Court train. It was for the 
Empress, and was covered with magnificent embroidery 
in real silver. Women were engaged on it night 
and day for six weeks. As to prices paid we have 
had 120,000 francs for a single gown, the lace alone 
costing 118,000 francs. We have sold a cloak for 
45,000 francs, of which 44,000 francs went for the fur. 
We have worked for all the Courts, but never for 
Queen Victoria." 

Charles Worth was buried very simply, with 
Protestant rites. He was soon forgotten in busy 
Paris. Six months after him a greater man, Louis 
Pasteur, died, and Dumas fils passed away also. 
Dumas died in November, 1895. I saw him only a 
few weeks before he fell ill. It was near the Madeleine, 
and after having saluted him in the customary French 
fashion, I complimented him on his apparently robust 
health. "Yes," he said, "I am fairly well, but I am 
tired, although I have only walked from the Gare St. 
Lazare down here, and that reminds me of age." 
There was a dreamy look in the usually bright, pene- 
trating eyes, and the dramatist also walked with some 
difficulty. He was no longer the brisk, active man 
whom I had met on the road between Dieppe and 
Le Puy a few years previously. Dumas died the 
victim of a cold caught in the damp weather of late 
autumn. His neighbour at Marly, M. Sardou, had 
invited him to attend the unveiling of Emile Augier's 
statue, and Dumas went to Paris for the purpose of 
doing so on a wet and chilly morning. M. Sardou 
passed through the ordeal of bad weather unhurt, but 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 201 

Dumas returned home coughing and sneezing. He 
had to take to his bed, and was nursed carefully until 
he died by his second wife, the daughter of a former 
actor at the Com^die Fran9aise, and by his daughters. 

It was a strange scene, the burial of Alexandre 
Dumas in the Montmartre Cemetery. All the theatrical 
people of Paris were there. I had not seen so many 
of them in the melancholy place since the funeral of 
Perrin, a director of the Comedie Fran9aise. It was 
the last act — the curtain ringing down on the dead 
dramatist, who was literally carried from the stage to 
the grave. Vanitas vanitahtm ! He went to the tomb 
his hearse followed by the whole company of the 
Th^^tre Fran9ais. It was curious to note the stage 
faces, pinched and pale or yellow in the cold air. 
M. Le Bargy, as one of the official chief mourners, was 
manifestly out of place there. The brilliant jeune 
premier looked seedy, shabby even, off the boards. 
So too did Mademoiselle Brandes and the others who 
beamed in beauty by night at the footlights. Madame 
Rdijane was in a theatrical mourning dress, sable cloak, 
black-plumed hat, and jet ornaments. Emile Zola 
appeared near the vault in a fawn-coloured overcoat 
which was out of keeping. Victorien Sardou looked 
like an undertaker, and was evidently overcome with 
grief, for he had a hand in the dead man's undoing, i 

The friends of Dumas fils still venerate his memory 
at an annual dinner organised by one of his most 
faithful henchmen. Only a few weeks after I had 
followed the funeral of Dumas to the Montmartre 
Cemetery young Max Lebaudy, the petit sucrier 

^ Sardou admitted this himself. As I have previously shown, 
he had Dumas out on a cold, wet morning. 



202 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

and the '* millionaire conscript," died of pulmonary- 
consumption. The youth was really hastened to the 
tomb by his feverish life, and also by the rigour of 
military discipline which he had tried, but unsuccess- 
fully, to elude. He was surrounded by a crowd of 
vampires before he died. Some of these had bled him 
for money, promising to get his term of army service 
cancelled. Others blackmailed him and wanted hush 
money for keeping compromising paragraphs out of 
the papers. He was nursed in his last moments by 
Mademoiselle Marsy, of the Com^die Fran9aise, who 
was supposed to be his devoted and disinterested 
friend. Anyhow she was more devoted and dis- 
interested than Liane de Pougy, who endeavoured to 
tap his relations for money on the strength of documents 
in her possession. Max died in December, 1895, ^^^ 
in March, 1896, the adventurers who had endeavoured 
to bleed and blackmail him were tried for "chantage." 
The record of the trial is classified at the Palais de 
Justice as the " affaire des chantages contre Max 
Lebazidy." The men accused were De Cesti, Balensi, 
who was a banker, the Vicomte de Civry, and Jacques 
Saint-Cere. The latter was the most remarkable man 
of the lot. He was really one Armand Rosenthal, 
a German Jew who succeeded as a journalist in Paris. 
He wrote on foreign politics for the Figaro, on Society 
matters for the Vie Parisienne, and was also retained 
for the New York Herald by Mr. J. G. Bennett, 
whom he once protected from an assault in a place of 
nocturnal revelry. Rosenthal rented a large and 
luxurious flat in one of the expensive streets near the 
Op6ra, and there, in the days of his glory, he received 
not only celebrities in art, literature and the drama, 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 203 

but Cabinet Ministers and Ambassadors. He was 
married to the divorced wife of a distinguished German, 
and she assisted him in his pecuHar journaHstic work. 
At the trial of the blackmailers of Max Lebaudy, 
Rosenthal would have got off cleared had not his past 
been brought up. Nobody could prove that he 
had actually blackmailed the petit sucrier, but the 
presiding magistrate referred at some length to a 
previous conviction for breach of trust and confidence. 
Rosenthal had, in fact, been condemned by default 
to thirteen months' imprisonment sixteen years before 
his alleged blackmailing of Lebaudy. At the time he 
was an adventurer in France, and sold real or spurious 
jewellery. In this connection he was accused of 
having pawned watches entrusted to his keeping for 
repair by women of no reputation. The production 
in court of the previous conviction was the death-blow 
of Jacques Saint-Cere, who could no longer show his 
face in the offices of important newspapers. Then he 
founded the Cride Paris, a weekly sheet, but this did 
not enable him to keep up his old train de vie, 
so he died. Some say that he poisoned himself, others 
hold that he lives somewhere still under an assumed 
name. The man was the nephew of Mgr. Bauer, 
a Jew who became a Catholic, a prelate of the Church 
of Rome, and domestic chaplain to the Empress 
Eugenie. Mgr. Bauer was one of the most extra- 
ordinary prelates who ever wore the purple. During 
the Second Empire he was seen everywhere, even 
behind the scenes at the Opera. He was an imitation, 
to a certain extent, of one of those Abbds de Cour 
who flourished in the seventeenth and in part of 
the eighteenth century. After the fall of the Empire 



204 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

he disappeared, and was heard of no more. I have 
been told that he was occasionally seen on the 
boulevards in the eighties dressed as a layman. One 
of the brothers of this ecclesiastic was a sort of stock- 
broker or banker in Madrid. As to the father of 
Jacques Saint-Cere, he was said to be a man who 
had attained importance as a cook or caterer for high 
personages at Berlin. 

Of other events in 1896 besides the trial of the 
blackmailers of Max Lebaudy, which took place in 
the month of March of that year, I propose to speak 
in the next chapter. 



CHAPTER XV 

M. Meline and ithe Affaire — Ambroise Thomas and the Con- 
servatoire — Cleo de Merode and the Kings — M. Cernuschi 
the Bi-metalHst— The Coming of the Tsar— Dr. E. J. 
Dillon on the Imperial visit — The Charity Bazaar Fire — 
A visit to Fleet Street — Opening of the Affaire — My talk 
with Maitre Demange, Defender of Dreyfus — Madame 
Hadamard's Tears — Maitre Demange's Prediction — The 
" Leakages," and the " Bordereau." 

EARLY in 1896 M. Meline, who uttered during 
his tenure of office that unlucky phrase " There 
is no Affaire Dreyfus," formed his Cabinet, v^^hich 
lasted until June, 1898. M. M61ine would, no doubt, 
have been glad to see the affaire hushed up, but 
the champions of the transported Captain of Artillery 
were too strong for him. He had accordingly to 
swallow his unlucky phrase and to retire before the 
force of the storm. His term of power was marked 
by many events of varying importance. Only just 
before he formed his Cabinet, in April, 1896, one 
of my most esteemed and valued friends in Paris, the 
composer Ambroise Thomas, died in his residence at 
the Conservatoire in the Faubourg Poissonniere, of 
which he was director. He was not a great com- 
poser, but he was a fine old Frenchman. I was 
introduced to him by Jules Garcin, a celebrated 

205 



206 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

French violinist who was for some years before his 
death director of the concerts at the Conservatoire. 
Garcin was a near neighbour of mine, and made me 
acquainted with many of the celebrities of his pro- 
fession, but as usual I had little time wherein to 
cultivate their society. What I saw of that society 
impressed me favourably, and I found the French 
men of music most interesting and agreeable persons. 
I was of opinion when meeting and foregathering 
with them that there was less rivalry and more good- 
fellowship among them than was the case with the 
people of the stage, the authors, and the pressmen. 

Ambroise Thomas had a splendid funeral service 
at the Trinite Church, the same place where Alboni 
had sung over the coffin of Rossini, just before the 
war of 1870 broke out. Rossini's funeral service was 
described by Felix Whitehurst, of the Telegraph, in 
his own glowing way. I think that the service for 
Ambroise Thomas was equally elaborate. Services 
of the kind are always magnificent in Paris, and the 
colleagues of dead musicians exert all their art to 
make them so. 

It was about this time that another person con- 
nected with the operatic world of Paris began to 
attract attention. This person assuredly had not 
been identified, like Ambroise Thomas, composer of 
"Mignon" and "Hamlet," with high art. I allude 
to Mademoiselle Cl^o de M^rode, of the operatic 
ballet. She was not a star, but she was beautiful and 
wore her hair plaited over her ears. She does this 
still, but it no longer attracts the attention of kings. 
Because the King of the Belgians had noticed her 
in the foyer de la danse, she was called Cleopold by 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 207 

the journalists and the name remained. The King 
had been attracted, not only by her appearance, but 
by her name of Merode. She has, it appears, some 
relationship with the Belgian noble family whose 
name she bears, but her mother was a minor actress 
of Vienna. The public attention called to this inter- 
esting person made all her companions at the Opera 
jealous. One of these, a statuesque Italian, Mademoi- 
selle Torri, with whom I once talked over the case 
of Cleo de Merode, clinched the argument by the 
remark : " Que voulez vous ? Elle n'est pas une 
artiste, mais elle est une belle femme." Cleo fancied 
that she had claims to artistry, and after having left the 
Opera went on tour and danced in Greek fashion 
before the Germans and Russians with some success. 
Cleo was also to the front in May, 1896, when Fal- 
guiere exhibited her as a nymph in the Salon of the 
Champs Elysees. It was naturally considered that 
she had posed to the sculptor in as absolute a manner 
as Pauline Bonaparte, Princess Borghese, had posed 
to Canova. Cleo wrote to the papers to state that 
M. Falguiere had worked from her bust only. The 
matter then dropped, as they say in some newspapers, 
and Paris began to be interested in something else. 

In this same year I find recorded in my notes the 
deaths of M. Cernuschi, Jules Simon, and Eugene 
Spuller ; also the engagement of Major Patrice de 
MacMahon to Marguerite, daughter of the Due de 
Chartres and sister of the Princess Waldemar of 
Denmark ; the farewell fete given by Lord Dufferin 
at the British Embassy ; the expulsion of Liane de 
Pougy from Russia ; the passing of the Due de 
Nemours ; the squabble over Abel Hermant's " La 



208 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Meute," which the Prince de Sagon and his son 
Hehe de Talleyrand, Max Lebaudy's society guide, 
resented ; the quarrel between L6on Daudet and 
M. Simon, newspaper director ; and the visit of Tsar 
Nicolas II. to Paris. 

On these Parisian happenings I propose to touch 
briefly. The three men to whose deaths I refer — 
Cernuschi, Jules Simon, and Spuller — I knew fairly 
well. Cernuschi, the Italian Croesus and champion 
of bimetallism, who became a naturalised Frenchman, 
was a notable personality. He conquered Paris more 
by his wealth than by his campaigning in favour 
of bi-metallism. I once went to hear him lecture 
on this hobby of his, and came away without having 
understood a single word of what he said. The 
subject of the lecture was arid, and the lecturer spoke 
Italian- French. He was the despair even of the 
technical reporters who sat under him. In private 
M. Cernuschi's French was intelligible enough, but 
in public, as a speaker, he was terrible. In his 
splendid house on the borders of the Pare Monceau, 
full of Buddhist statues and souvenirs, he once gave 
an entertainment which I attended in company with 
a thousand others. In the midst of it he jumped on 
a table, waving a tricolour, and sang the " Marseillaise," 
to emphasise his feelings towards France and the 
Republic. He was a fine, patriarchal figure, and 
was noted for his generosity. He was frequently 
"tapped" by needy politicians and journalists and 
rarely refused a loan or a donation. It is doubtful if 
many of those who were in debt to him followed his 
funeral. 

Jules Simon, who was partly Jewish and partly a 




Pltoto] 



Emile Combes. 



[Gcrschd 



To face p. 209, 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 209 

Celt, passed away soon after his meeting at Berlin 
with the Emperor William, who consulted him on 
some economic questions of the day. He used to 
live in a house close to the Madeleine, his near 
neighbour being Henri Meilhac the dramatist. These 
two dissimilar men talked when they met of anything 
but politics. Meilhac was a man of the theatre, and 
spoke about it freely. Jules Simon could talk well on 
the same subject, for he had been Minister of Public 
Instruction, &c., and in that capacity had a good deal 
to do with at least the endowed playhouses. As 
a politician he followed every movement keenly, was 
deeply interested in English affairs, and had, I believe, 
known Richard Cobden, John Bright, Sir Robert 
Peel, and Mr. Gladstone. 

Eugene Spuller, the gros Badois, in allusion to 
his German origin, was not so scholarly as Jules 
Simon, but he was a good writer and an efficient 
speaker. I once heard him and M. Rouvier boast 
at a commercial banquet in the Hotel Continental of 
their very humble origins. One was the son of a 
mason, the other of a cooper or something of that 
sort, and they both became Cabinet Ministers. 
Unlike M. Rouvier, the gros Badois was a com- 
paratively poor man. 

Of the other events besides these deaths the most 
noteworthy was the coming of the Tsar and Tsaritsa 
in October, 1 896. The preparations for that event were 
on a stupendous scale. Not only were there triumphal 
arches and flags everywhere, but the trees near the 
Rond-point of the Champs Elys^es were covered 
with artificial flowers, according to a scheme planned 
by a decorator of theatres. I chiefly remember the 

15 



210 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Tsar's visit owing to the fact that it brought me 
into touch for the second or third time with that 
remarkable man Dr. E. J. Dillon. That well-known 
authority on Russia, its rulers and its people, was sent 
over to Paris for the Tsar's visit by the Editor of the 
Daily Telegraph. With him came Mr. J. M. Le Sage, 
who organised the correspondence during the visit. 
Four Correspondents, including Dr. Dillon, did the 
work and the watching, for it was expected that a 
bomb might blow to bits at any moment the Tsar, the 
Tsaritsa, and their friend President Felix Faure, not 
to speak of the baby Grand Duchess Olga. It was 
said that the Tsar would go about as a Haroun-al- 
Raschid, that he would throw off all official trammels 
for a while, and, in fact, imitate his uncles the Grand 
Dukes who " do " Paris from top to bottom, in what 
has been known for long years as ''la tournde des 
grand DucsT I think the Tsar Nicholas is not strong 
enough to stand that sort of tournie. It would soon 
kill him off, or cripple him. Here is how a very witty 
French writer, " one of the crowd " of witty writers, 
described what the Tsar's uncles do when they are in 
Paris. He refers chiefly to the Grand Duke Vladimir, 
but " Ex uno " may be said. ** C'etait I'autre soir a la 
Comedie Frangaise. Salle comble, soir de premiere. 
Un grand silence. La scene est pathetique. Des 
yeux se mouillent de larmes. Tout a coup, a I'avant 
scene — I'avant scene de droite — un ronflement eclate, 
un ronflement sonore — un roulement de tambours, un 
grondement d'orage, qui arrete les com^diens en 
scene et fait sursauter la salle. Les mains croisees 
sur le ventre, les jambes allongees, la tete appuyee a 
la cloison de la loge, le Grand-due Wladimir doirt du 
sommeil du juste. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 211 

*' II ne faut pas lui en vouloir. C'estla fatigue. II est 
debout depuis le matin. II a couru Paris dans tous 
les sens. II a visit6 les coins pittoresques de la 
capitale, il a essaye deux automobiles, il est entre, 
dans quelque quinze magasins, il a dejeune dans un 
grand cabaret — et on sait comment dejeune un grand 
due — il a essay6 une troisieme automobile, il est alle 
aux courses, il a fait un tour au Bois il est alle rendre 
quelques visites, il s'est promene sur la boulevard, il 
est monte un moment au cercle, il est rentre 
s'habiller, il a dine dans un grand restaurant — et on 
sait comment dine un grand-due — il s'est rendu ensuite 
au theatre ; apres, il a soupe — puis. . . Mais glis- 
sons. Et il a recommence le lendemain. Et c'est 
comme ga tous les jours. Alors, n'est ce pas, ou peut 
bien I'excuser ! " 

This French picture of a Grand Duke's day in Paris 
is not by any means exaggerated. At the same time I 
have known some foreign — that is to say, non- French 
— millionaires, who put in an equally strenuous time 
while staying in Paris. The fact was that they did 
not know how to fill up their time, and they wanted a 
new excitement or emotion every moment. I have 
known some of them to fling their money around in 
cafes, but I have never seen any of them so absurdly 
generous and extravagant as the English millionaire 
who threw bank-notes to Covent Garden porters. 

Tsar Nicholas went around Paris secretly, in a 
closed carriage, once or twice during his visit in 
October, 1896, but he did not tire himself. All the 
newspaper men were watching his merest movements. 
Everything that he did and everything that he said 
was carefully chronicled. 



212 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Dr. Dillon's performances in the way of producing 
copy on this occasion were enormous. He was ailing, 
but he wrote nearly six columns about the illuminations 
of Paris, and three or four concerning the new bridge 
intended for the Exhibition of 1900 and called after 
Tsar Alexander the Third. 

Mr. W. T. Stead has already put on record the 
capacity for work, the versatility, and the achieve- 
ments of Dr. Dillon. I can only add that he is the 
most marvellous writer whom I have seen at work. 
When he first came to the office of the Daily Tele- 
graph in Paris, he wrote all day and far into the night. 
When he finished his correspondence from Paris for 
the Telegraph he started to write magazine articles 
for London, articles for a Russian paper, and in 
between he contrived to revise the proofs of a book 
devoted to the higher criticism of the Old Testament. 
I saw him once equally busy when he was Telegraph 
Correspondent in Vienna. In order to accompany 
me around the Kaiserstadt he broke off writing an 
elaborate article on Russian finance and the trans- 
lation of a document in one of the Semitic languages. 
That he can write pure and faultless English is proved 
in his book on the sceptics of the Old Testament, a 
copy of which he was good enough to send me with 
his autograph. 

The year 1896 concluded with one or two events 
worthy of notice. In November died Mgr. d'Hulst, 
rector of the Catholic Institute, and a prominent figure 
in the Chamber of Deputies. He had been brought 
up by Queen Marie Amelie, and was supposed to be 
of Royal parentage. He was an able debater and 
speaker of the academical sort, and wrote a good 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 213 

deal in the review called the Correspondant. An 
interesting event of the same period was the 
apotheosis of Madame Sarah Bernhardt, organised 
by her burly friend Henri Bauer, formerly an influ- 
ential dramatic critic, but who has disappeared from 
the ranks of the active writers of Paris. 

I have good reason to remember the year 1897. 
In April of that year I was at Brest and Ushant, 
for the distribution of the Drummond Castle medals 
previously referred to, and soon after I returned to 
Paris occurred the disastrous fire in the charity bazaar 
of the Rue Jean Goujon. By a strange coincidence 
that fatal blaze, in which the Duchesse d'Alencon and 
many more ladies were burned, horrified the world 
almost exactly ten years after the destruction by fire 
of the Opera Comique. The latter establishment was 
burned down on May 25, 1887, and the disaster at 
the charity bazaar occurred on May 4, 1897. The 
horrors of the bazaar fire linger unpleasantly in my 
memory. Women and girls in light spring attire were 
burned beyond recognition. Men fought like wolves 
to get out of the Gehenna, and the weaker were 
trampled under foot. Some of those who were in- 
cinerated had only a few steps to take in order to reach 
a place of safety. The funerals of the victims were 
productive of more horror. The coffins contained 
only charred remains, which could not have been 
identified by the relatives. A neighbour of mine lost 
his daughter in the blaze, and some charred bones 
were brought to him and his wife a few days after. 
I went to the funeral, which was conducted in the 
customary elaborate way of the French. There was 
a fine religious service, a walk past the mourners, each 



214 FORTY YEARS OF PAJIIS 

person invited shaking hands with them and murmur- 
ing some words of condolence or consolation, and then 
the sad burial in the family vault, with more prayers by 
the priest. 

Shortly after this I was over in London for the 
Victorian Jubilee of 1897, ^^^ had the peculiar expe- 
rience of lodging for a fortnight in one of the upper 
rooms of the Daily Telegraph office in Fleet Street. 
During that fortnight I was kept busily employed as 
one of the numerous recorders of the events of the 
Jubilee. This was a novel experience for me after 
years of absence from London. It made me remember 
the time when I sent a leader on the infallibility of 
the Pope to the Editor of the Telegraph, and when I 
used to look with awe into the recesses of Peter- 
borough Court, and gaze with wonderment at the 
windows of the old building in which were then the 
offices of the great daily. Well, by the irony of 
things, I was actually living in the new offices of the 
Telegraph in June, 1897. I had most substantial 
breakfasts brought to me by the housekeeper every 
morning, and then I descended to the editorial rooms 
for instructions as to what I had to do for the day. 
The work was easy at first, although I had to produce 
copy on Saturday. As the day of the Queen's journey 
through London drew nigh there was more to do, and 
more difficulty in doing it, owing to the crowding in 
the streets. I found that after I had been to a place 
and made my notes there I was unable to reach the 
office by hansom or 'bus for the purpose of throwing 
my jottings into shape. It was necessary to fight my 
way through the crowd, and thus to be late with copy. 
How I longed on those occasions for the wide streets 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 215 

and avenues of Paris, where, in the most excited times, 
and when people are out in crowds, there is always 
room to move, or at least to get around by devious 
ways to one's destination. On the day of the Jubilee 
procession I was posted on Constitution Hill, and had 
to take up the narrative of the Royal progress after 
Clement Scott, who was more or less comfortably 
stationed in the grounds of Buckingham Palace, where 
he saw the start. I was under the impression that in 
the small space for observation allotted to me there 
would be no chance of finding matter for copy. I 
managed, however, to get enough inspiration for nearly 
two columns of glowing prose. I described the Queen 
surrounded by the " captains and the kings," although 
I looked in vain for monarchs, and the only captain 
whom I recognised among those following the Sove- 
reign was Captain Acland, a Naval A.D.C., since 
promoted to a higher rank, and whom I had met 
a few weeks before at Brest, whither he came in 
H.M.'s guardship Alexandra, on the occasion of the 
presentation of the Drummond Castle medals. On 
the day after the procession I was at Windsor and 
Eton. At the latter place I had the pleasure of being 
received by that famous Headmaster, Dr. Warre, and 
also by the Provost, Dr. Hornby, who gave me some 
facilities for recording Queen Victoria's Jubilee visit 
to the college. I wrote my account of the visit at 
Eton, but had immense difficulty in getting through 
the crowd to the Windsor station. I reached this 
place at the same time as Mr. J. Gordon Bennett, who 
had been watching the Queen's arrival in the Royal 
borough, and whom I recognised on the platform of 
the station. My difficulties were not over when, after 



216 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

having long waited for a train, I got one and reached 
Paddington, In Praed Street no cabbies would take 
me owing to the crowds. At last, in the Edgware 
Road I met a driver who agreed to put me down 
somewhere near Chancery Lane. He did so, but I 
had to fight my way to and through Fleet Street on 
foot, and when at last I reached the Telegraph office 
I found the sub-editors howling for my copy. I was 
not "up to time," that was certain, and there was no 
use in attempting to explain the numerous causes of 
my delay to Mr. Le Sage, who was too awfully busy 
to listen to any explanation whatever. 

These are, however, memories of London, and my 
business lies with memories of Paris. I had not been 
back long when the tremendous Dreyfus affair was 
revived, and when a storm began which raged through 
France and Europe for nearly ten years. Its first 
feeble mutterings were heard in 1896, and it only 
subsided in 1906, by the reinstatement or "rehabili- 
tation " of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. 

I had something to do with the reopening of the 
affaire, although it was not chronicled in histories 
of the case. In the summer of 1896 I received a letter 
from Mr. W. Gilliland, who was acting for a time 
as Managing Editor of the Daily Telegraph in the 
absence of Mr. J. M. Le Sage. Mr. Gilliland told 
me that Sir Edward Lawson, now Lord Burnham, 
would like me to see some members of the Dreyfus 
family relative to the agitation which was arising 
over the case of the disgraced and transported 
artillery officer. I accordingly went to the house 
of Madame Hadamard, mother-in-law of Captain 
Dreyfus, who lives in the Rue de Chateaudun. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 217 

Madame Hadamard, a good-looking woman in spite 
of the advance of time, received me in her drawing- 
room. She showed traces of intense sorrow, and 
seemed as if she must have been weeping ever since 
her son-in-law was degraded and sent across the seas 
to that horrible hut in Devil's Island where he long 
lingered in what appeared to be hopeless captivity. 
She said that her daughter, Madame Dreyfus, was 
too ill, too prostrated by grief, to receive anybody. 
Then in reply to my queries she affirmed that she 
and all her family had full confidence that her son- 
in-law's innocence would be proved, and that the hour 
of his liberation would come in due time. " But go 
and see Maitre Demange,"said Madame Hadamard; 
"he is sure to receive you, as the Editor of the 
Telegraph sends you for information." 

Thanking the distressed lady, I drove at once 
to the residence of Maitre Demange, in the Rue Jacob, 
not far from the Palais de Justice. It was evening, 
and the rooms of the celebrated lawyer who defended 
Captain Dreyfus at the court-martial in Paris which 
had convicted that officer were filled with clients of 
both sexes waiting for consultations. Maitre Demange 
kindly interrupted his work to receive me. I found 
him with his secretary in a comfortable and finely 
furnished study, sitting at a table covered with 
documents. His appearance reminded me a little 
of that of Sir George Jessel, the celebrated Jewish 
lawyer whom I used to see and hear long ago in the 
old Courts at Lincoln's Inn. Mattre Demange 
looked at the letter which I had received from London 
and then said, "You can tell your chiefs that in my 
heart and soul I believe that Alfred Dreyfus is an 



218 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

innocent man. His innocence is to me clear, and 
it will one day be proved. I can say no more to 
you on the subject. There cannot, in fact, be 
anything more said on the subject. For the present 
M. Dreyfus must remain where they have sent him. 
I cannot do anything, nor can his relatives, but the 
day will come when justice will be done." 

Edgar Demange spoke truly. Justice was done, 
but only after a decade of commotion and convulsion 
such as the world had never seen before over the 
case of one man, and will never, in all probability, see 
again. I do not think that it is necessary to refer at 
any great length to the affaire, which has been well 
threshed out in the newspapers of the world. Who 
that reads newspapers does not remember the history 
of it ? Who does not recall the names of the principal 
actors in the drama, and remember that it originated 
in the " leakages " discovered by the Intelligence 
Department of the French War Office ? These 
''leakages," or secret information concerning the 
National Defence, were going on since 1892. The 
German and Italian military attaches. Von Schwartz- 
Koppen and Panizzardi, were supposed to be receiving 
information from some French officer. Then the 
Intelligence Department employs Madame Bastian, 
charwoman at the German Embassy, to bring them 
all the fragments of papers collected by her in the 
offices which she had to clean out every morning. 
In this way came to the French authorities the docu- 
ment with the words " Ce canaille de D , "supposed 

to have been written by the German Emperor, other 
documents appearing to show that Major Von 
Schwartzkoppen was receiving information direct 




Alfred Dreyfus. 



\Gcyschel 



To face f. 218. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 219 

from the French War Office, and finally the 
bordereau, or note about guns and troops, which 
was the work of Esterhazy, but was attributed to 
Dreyfus. Soon afterwards it was decided to arrest 
Captain Dreyfus, an artillery officer, son of an Alsatian 
manufacturer. 

I often wondered what induced Alfred Dreyfus 
to enter the French Army. An able Jew, devoted 
to work, issue of a hard-headed, money-making, com- 
mercial stock, he goes through the miilitary schools, 
joins the army and is a staff probationer. He is 
so clever, so devoted to work, and withal so proud 
of his attainments, far superior to those of his 
Christian colleagues, that he becomes an object of 
envy and jealousy. Now, in trade, in the com- 
mercial line of his Jewish forefathers, some of whom 
had been pedlars, but became successful and opulent, 
Alfred Dreyfus, by the exercise of those very talents 
which made him enemies in the army, would have 
risen to pre-eminence as a merchant prince. 

He chooses the army, however, and the result 
is only too well known. Military degradation, 
banishment to Devil's Island, the torture of heat, flies, 
mosquitoes, and the " double buckle " for four years, 
and finally, after enormous suffering and anxiety, the 
new trial and then the " rehabilitation." And sand- 
wiched between the various episodes of the affaire,^ 
connected directly with M. Dreyfus himself, were 
the trial of Esterhazy, the trial and the ruin of Emile 

^ This means the Dreyfusian episodes, such as his arrest, his 
supposed escape from Devil's Island, his appeals from prison, 
his redoubled punishment, his home-coming, &c., as dis- 
tinguished from collateral affairs. 



220 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Zola, the suicide of Colonel Henry, who had falsified 
documents for the purpose of blackening more deeply 
the supposed traitor, the partial ruin of Colonel 
Picquart, who took up the case of his fellow-Alsa- 
tian, and the mysterious sudden death of President 
Felix Faure. 

My meeting with Maitre Demange, after I had 
seen Madame Hadamard, mother-in-law of Captain 
Dreyfus, was the signal for the outburst in favour 
of a new court-martial. My record of Maitre 
Demange's brief but pregnant communication 
appeared next day in the Telegraph and attracted 
immense attention. The Jews of London throbbed 
in sympathy with those of France and Germany. 
The Gentiles, too, began to wonder if there had not 
been some foul play, or at least a miscarriage of 
justice. The Daily Chronicle next took the case up, 
and a man of letters lectured in London on the affaire, 
giving reproductions of the bordereau on a board. 
In Paris, Bernard Lazare had published his pamphlet 
and Senator Scheurer-Kestner, M. Joseph Reinach, 
M. Trarieux, and Matthew Dreyfus opened their 
campaign and formed what was called the Syndicate. 
Then France became divided, and the Dreyfusards 
and anti-Dreyfusards vilified and denounced each 
other in public and private. The battle raged, not 
only in the Press, but in Government offices, in 
banks, shops, and private families. I knew one 
family where the daughters were for the army and 
against Dreyfus, and the sons emphatically in favour 
of the wronged artillery officer. There were Catholics, 
lay and ecclesiastic, for Dreyfus, as well as the Jews, 
the atheists, the Agnostics, the Freethinkers and the 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 221 

Freemasons. In England, and even in Ireland and 
Scotland, the majority were for Dreyfus. It was 
interesting to note that, while Pere Du Lac and other 
Jesuits who had educated staff officers, such as 
Colonel du Paty de Clam, General de Boisdeffre and 
Miribel, were accused of having pulled the strings 
in the Dreyfus case, Jesuits in England and Ireland 
were in favour of the unlucky officer. I remember 
that a distinguished and eloquent Irish Jesuit, Father 
Kane, once preached in Dublin actually in favour 
of fair play to the Jewish captain who was being 
daily branded as a traitor by the majority of the 
French Catholics. This was one of the many 
anomalies of the affaire which is still discussed in 
France, even after the officer has been reinstated in 
the army, and promoted. 



CHAPTER XVI 

Alphonse Daudet's death — His family and friends — M. Leon 
Daudet on France and England — Emile Zola's letter 
" J'accuse " — His trial — Colonel Henry's suicide — The 
Fashoda alarm — Lord Kitchener in Paris when Sirdar — 
His arrival with Baratier at the Gare de Lyon — Death of 
Mr. Hely Bowes, a notable journalist — The mysterious 
Death of President Faure — His secretary's statement — 
Legends of " La Belle Juive " and the lady with the 
violets — M. Faure's personality and picturesqueness. 

ALPHONSE DAUDET died in December, 
1897, j^st as the Dreyfus affair was being 
revived. The death of the noveHst passed almost 
unnoticed. He had long been ailing at his country seat 
near Corbeil and Melun, and was physically a wreck 
when I last saw him in Paris. That was at the 
Gymnase Theatre where he went to witness the 
unsuccessful adaptation of one of the novels of the 
Goncourt brothers. Edmond de Goncourt, the 
survivor of the two brothers, was also at the first 
night. He passed away rather suddenly at Daudet's 
house in the country, and his death gave a shock 
to the author of " Les Rois en Exil," "L'Evangeliste," 
" L'Immortel," and " La Lutte pour la Vie." When 
I began regular journalistic work in Paris, in 1884, 

Alphonse Daudet was one of the most prominent of 

222 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 223 

the literary men there. He had a wide audience, and 
was supposed to command a large income from his 
books. I cannot say that any of these interested me 
as I was interested by Anatole France, Paul Bourget, 
Maurice Barres, the Goncourts, Prosper Merimee, and 
to a certain extent by Zola, Ohnet, and Mendes. I 
read a good deal of Daudet, but I was somehow 
repelled by his greed for "actualities." He rammed 
all sorts of daily happenings into his novels, and 
captured all sorts of people who were notorious, or 
who were brought suddenly into prominence, for his 
characters. " Numa Roumestan " is rather a good study 
ofGambetta, but the people in "Les Rois en Exil" and 
*' L'Evangeliste," some of whom I knew in real life, 
seemed to be drawn in for mere effect, nor could they 
have been artistically handled by the author, even if 
he tried to handle them in that way. Tom Lewis in 
" Les Rois " is Mr. John Arthur, a commercial man, 
once a most prosperous member of the British colony 
of Paris. He was especially prosperous in the days 
of Napoleon the Third, but towards the end of the 
last century he was in deep financial difficulties. 
Daudet did better with Miss Booth, afterwards Mrs. 
Booth-Clibborn, of the Salvation Army, who is the 
Evangelist. One of the last books written by Daudet 
was his " Trente ans de Paris," in which he recounted 
his early troubles, which were of a very serious nature. 
He had an uphill struggle, but it was not quite so 
terrible as that experienced by his friend Zola, or by 
Sardou. I used to meet Daudet frequently on the 
boulevards in the eighties, and he always reminded 
me of the artist, or painter, rather than the man 
of letters. His black, wavy hair he wore long, and 



224 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

he liked cloaks and flowing ties. He also looked the 
real Southern, the Meridional who had some drops of 
Saracenic blood in his veins. 

The Daudet family is a thoroughly literary one, 
more so than that of Victor Hugo. Ernest Daudet, 
brother of Alphonse, is no mean historian ; Leon 
Daudet, son of the novelist, is a weaver of fiction as 
his father was, and he is one of the most incisive 
writers for the Nationalist Press. His mother, 
Madame Alphonse Daudet, likewise keeps up the 
strong literary reputation of the house. Leon Daudet 
is, however, the chief writer of the family. Some of 
his work is so good that I decline to admit the ruling 
of my friend Steinlen the artist, who called Leon 
Daudet ''un fils a papa'' This was during a row 
caused by one of Steinlen's caricatures, to which 
Ldon Daudet and his quondam brother-in-law Georges 
Hugo took offence. Steinlen, who is a hard-working 
draughtsman, meant by his phrase '^ fils a papa'' that 
L6on Daudet was prosperous in life owing to his 
father's money and influence, whereas he — Steinlen — 
was the ''fils de ses ceuvres." 

I cannot resist quoting some of Leon Daudet's 
prose as I quoted some of that of Laurent Tailhade. 
In 1903, for instance, when King Edward visited 
Paris, Daudet wrote about German and English 
influence on Frenchmen : *' Le genie de notre race 
est a la fois tres particulier, et tres malleable. Fait 
d'orgueil et d'impressionabilit^, il presuppose chez 
I'adversaire et le vainqueur, des qualit^s de premier 
rang. La raison entre en nous par les fissures de 
I'enthousiasme . . . chose Strange I'homme d'etat 
Anglais, Whig ou Tory, continue d'hypnotiser notre 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 225 

personnel an pouvoir. Que pense de moi (depuis 
Ferry a Delcasse), le Cabinet de Londres ? Quelle 
idee se font de moi, Disraeli, Gladstone, Rosebery, 
Salisbury ? La generation de politiciens d^mocrates 
formes par les loges et la brasserie considere avec 
admiration, cette aristocratie d'affaires qui gere 
d^gamment le plus grand comptoir du monde. Les 
orchidees, les redingotes, les Sponges monstres de 
leurs Chamberlains et de leurs Arthur Balfours, font 
rever nos Camille Pelletans." It must be mentioned, 
with reference to the *' big sponges " of Mr. Chamber- 
lain and Mr. Balfour, and to M. Camille Pelletan, 
that the latter politician was at one time constantly 
the butt of Conservative and Nationalist sarcasm on 
the ground that he had a rooted objection to baths, 
and that he never combed his hair. M. Pelletan had 
his hair cut, and presented a smart appearance, soon 
after his marriage with a schoolmistress while he was 
Minister of Marine in the cabinet of M. Combes. 

M. Daudet next tries to dethrone J. S. Mill and 
Herbert Spencer, who, he says, are only quoted in 
France nowadays by M. Clemenceau, and he holds 
that for the past twenty years there has been nothing 
worth reading in English literature except the novels 
of George Meredith. 

" On a bien essaye de nous glisser dans la paco- 
tille, Rudyard Kipling, mais nous sommes devenus 
malins, et nous avons de la resistance." 

Hear also M. Daudet on M. Combes, the Minister 
who waged war with so much determination against 
the religious orders. " Nous sumes bientot que cet 
illustre M. Combes etait un ancien pretre defroque." 
This, by the way, is not quite true, for M. Combes 

16 



226 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

never received full sacerdotal orders, but no matter. 
*' Remarquons en passant le role considerable que les 
apostats et les renegats auront jou6 dans la politique 
contemporaine. Le grand philosophe de la secte fut 
Ernest Renan qui prit la chose avec une mollesse 
enjoude, et declara, une fois pour toutes, que rien 
iQi-bas n'a d'importance. Celui qui s'emancipe de ses 
serments fait volontiers de cette emancipation une 
regie de vie et une doctrine. Les plus intr^pides parmi 
nos laicisateurs et nos proscripteurs sont des ratds 
de la vocation religieuse. lis la rendent responsable 
de leurs anciens echecs et de leur propre insuffisance. 
lis ont en haine ceux qui sans ddfaillir, sont demeur^s 
serviteurs de Dieu." 

M. Daudet, as may be seen from the fragments of 
his prose quoted, is a '' fils a papa " inasmuch as 
he can write well. Whatever may be his private 
reputation, and his adventures as a man about town, 
he can observe, reflect, and put the result of his 
observations and reflections into fluent and forcible 
prose. 

Hastening on to 1898, I find that in the January of 
that year I made a close acquaintance with the 
Palais de Justice. This was a place which I never 
cared for overmuch, principally owing to the difficulties 
put in the way of a journalist there whenever a cause 
cilebre is being heard. The trial of Emile Zola 
for his furious letter " J accuse," in which he attacked 
the officers of the court-martial before which Captain 
Dreyfus appeared, and also the chiefs of the army, 
lasted three w^eeks. Zola was put on trial with 
Perreux, manager of the Aurore, in which the letter 
" J 'accuse " appeared. Some of the foreign journalists, 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 227 

notably Dr. Goldmann, of the Frankfort Gazette, must 
have lived at the Palais de Justice during those three 
weeks. At any rate, they had all their meals there. 
The energetic Goldmann was crunching thick ham 
sandwiches every day, and writing out his despatches 
for Frankfort at the same time. I was usually at the 
Palais towards evening, and the case continued late. 
It concluded on the night of February 23, 1898, Zola 
being condemned to one year's imprisonment and a 
fine of 3,000 francs. Perreux had a sentence of four 
months and the same fine as Zola. I had some 
trouble in verifying the exact terms of the sentences 
at a late hour, and while I was driving to the office in 
a cab with my copy, I was horrified to find that an 
evening paper which I bought on the way brought 
out an edition in which it was brazenly asserted that 
Zola had been acquitted. 

The year 1898 was fertile in alarms and surprises. 
Zola appealed, had a second trial at Versailles in May, 
was condemned and disappeared to England. In the 
ensuing month M. M^line resigned, having obtained 
only a very meagre majority in a debate on the 
general policy of the Government. He was succeeded 
on June 28, 1898, by M. Henri Brisson, who had 
M. Delcass6 as Foreign Minister, and M. Godefroy 
Cavaignac as War Minister. 

Now came the suicide of Colonel Henry in Fort 
Mont Valerienat Suresnes. It happened in September, 
1898, while I was on a holiday trip. I had been 
to London, to Boulogne-sur-Mer, and then, notwith- 
standing the warm weather prevailing at the time, 
to the South of France. After having visited Monte 
Carlo and enjoyed its summer desolation, there being 



228 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

only about a dozen people in the Casino to respond to 
the croupiers' call, I stayed a week at Marseilles. It 
was there, while walking in the early morning on the 
quays, that I saw the headings of the newspapers 
in the kiosques, " Suicide du Colonel Henry." I 
bought the Petit Marseillais, and there in a long letter 
from Paris read the details of the tragedy in Mont 
Valerien which changed the whole face of the Dreyfus 
case. 

To tell the truth, although the Marseilles people are 
supposed to be excitable, they did not seem to be 
much perturbed by the suicide. I myself was in fact 
the person who was most excited about it. The 
Marseillais took it all quite calmly, and did not discuss 
it and gesticulate over it. They went on eating their 
bouillabaisse as usual, and at Pascal's, where I had 
mine with a bottle of local Cannet wine to wash it 
down, nobody seemed to trouble about the colonel's 
suicide and the new aspect of the Dreyfus case. 

It was far otherwise in Paris. When I returned 
there from Marseilles I found the men in the street 
engaged in discussing the affaire. There was never 
so much commotion before over any event. M. 
Godefroy Cavaignac, who had believed in Henry, 
and in the bordereau, and everything piled up against 
Alfred Dreyfus, resigned his portfolio as War 
Minister. General Zurlinden succeeded him, and 
soon resigned also, General Chamoine being ap- 
pointed. Revision was the result. 

In this same month of September the Empress 
of Austria was assassinated at Geneva by Lucchesi, 
and Paris as well as every other city was thrilled 
by the news. The French Anarchists and Anar- 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 229 

chists of other nations living in Paris kept themselves 
very quiet at the time, as the assassination of 
the harmless Empress Elizabeth was resented in 
France. 

Then we had the Fashoda alarm and menaces 
of war between France and England. The Sirdar, 
afterwards Lord Kitchener, who had ousted from the 
Nile mud Major, afterwards Colonel Marchand, was 
execrated by many patriotic Frenchmen. Marchand 
was extolled as the orreatest and the most daring- of 
explorers. The meeting at Fashoda between the 
tall and commanding British officer of the Egyptian 
army, and the small, almost puny. Frenchman of 
the Colonial Service, was strong in its contrasts. 
This I realised when I saw both Lord Kitchener and 
Colonel Marchand some time after in Paris. 

The Fashoda affair and the affaire Dreyfus 
marched together, as the French say, in those closing 
months of 1898. On October 5th the Court of 
Cassation was called upon to declare whether or 
not a " new fact " tending to prove the innocence 
of Alfred Dreyfus, convicted of high treason, had 
come to light. The " new fact " was the suicide 
of Colonel Henry, and M. Manau, Procureur General 
applied for the revision of the case, to the Criminal 
Chamber of the Court of Cassation, on behalf of 
Madame Dreyfus. 

Next ensued the fall of M. Henri Brisson's Cabinet 
over this very question of revision, on the first day 
that the Chamber met after the recess following the 
General Election of May, 1898. M. Dupuy formed 
the new Cabinet on October 31st, M. Delcasse being 
retained at the Foreign Office, M. Lockroy in the 



230 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Naval Department, and M. Peytral at the Exchequer. 
M. Brisson had fallen on October 25, 1898, and on 
the following evening the Sirdar, then Sir Herbert 
Kitchener, came up to Paris from Marseilles, where he 
had landed on his return from Egypt. I went down 
to the Gare de Lyon to see the Sirdar arrive, and 
found the station crowded with enthusiastic French 
patriots. They had come, not to meet the Sirdar, 
assuredly, but to welcome home and to acclaim Captain 
Baratier, who had been one of Marchand's com- 
panions and assistants in the expedition across Africa, 
from the West to Fashoda and the Nile. 

I never knew if the arrival by the same train 
in Paris of the Sirdar and of Baratier was a mere 
coincidence, or if it had been decided by Marchand's 
backers to send on their man then in order to make 
the English " avaler un couleuvre'' Baratier and those 
with him were in the middle carriage of the train 
as it came into the station, and as they were seen 
at the windows, a tempest of vivats burst out and 
was continued for about a quarter of an hour. Sir 
Herbert Kitchener, Sir Henry Rawlinson, and another 
officer. Captain Rawson, who was accompanying the 
Sirdar, were in a carriage near the end of the train 
and stepped out quietly on the platform, received 
by nobody, unless the representatives of the London 
papers who were present, and M. Lemoine, Messrs. 
Cook's agent, could be said to be their welcomers. 

I saw Sir Herbert Kitchener looking curiously at 
the crowd of men and women who were acclaiming 
Captain Baratier. Then he turned away and was 
piloted by M. Lemoine to a vehicle which took himself 
and the officers with him to one of the hotels of 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 231 

Messrs. Cook & Son, near the Gare du Nord. That 
was the first and last time that I saw him who has 
become Lord Kitchener of Khartoum. As to Major 
or Colonel Marchand, his temporary competitor for 
a few acres of Nile mud, I saw him first when he 
marched with his blacks in the annual review of 
troops on July 14, 1899. But the Fashoda affair was 
destined soon to be forgotten, and the entente cordiale 
had the effect of causing it to be buried. Marchand 
was promoted Colonel, but did not prosper. He met 
with the same apathy that was shown to the French 
explorers and colonisers of old, and there are those who 
hold that he injured himself by his own persistent 
impatience, grumbling, and cantankerousness. 

In the height of the excitement caused by Dreyfus 
and the Fashoda affair, the British colony in Paris, 
and especially those among them who were cor- 
respondents of newspapers, received a great shock 
owing to the sudden death of Mr. Hely Hutchinson 
Bowes, who had represented the Standard under the 
Johnsonian regime for over thirty years. It had been 
several years since any Correspondent had died in 
Paris. The representatives of the Morning Post 
and of the Daily News, Mr. Noyse Brown and 
Mr. G. M. Crawford, went over to the majority in 
the early eighties. Mr. Bowes was a small, wiry 
man, full of energy, bubbling over with wit, appa- 
rently built to pass eighty, but he began to grow 
very feeble in 1897, and had to be attended by a 
man-servant to the office of the Standard. He ought 
to have retired, but as he needed money for an 
expensive family, he continued to work on. One 
night in the early part of November, 1898, he went 



232 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

home to his house in the Rue Bassano from the 
Standard office in the Rue de la Paix, and complained 
to Mrs. Bowes that he felt suddenly ill. I heard that 
he died in his arm-chair a few hours after he had 
complained to his wife of being in pain. Mr. Bowes 
had in early life been connected with Galignani s 
Messenger, as his father was. He spoke French of 
Paris, and was even wittier in that language than he 
was in the tongue of his forefathers. You looked in 
vain for any of the wit in his correspondence, which 
was political and arid, but his conversation was most 
entertaining. Maitre Cluny of the Paris bar, once 
sat beside Hely Bowes, without knowing him, at a 
public dinner, and was fairly dazzled by the little 
Englishman's caustic observations, sallies of wit, 
bon mots, and jokes, all emitted in faultless French.^ 
After the dinner Maitre Cluny went about inquiring 
who was the brilliant little Englishman who had so 
entertained and dazzled him. 

Hely Bowes was long assisted in his Paris work 
by Mr. Thomas Farman, who afterwards became 
Correspondent of the Tribune, and betv/een them they 
turned out very serious sheaves of correspondence for 
their important paper. A good deal of it was rejected 
owing to exigencies of space, and also because Mr. 
Hely Bowes, when wound up to go on some political 
topic in which he was interested keenly, could not 
stop himself, and accordingly he wrote occasionally 
much more than the Standard required. This has 
often happened to other Paris Correspondents of 
London newspapers, who, imagining the British 
public to be as interested as they are themselves in 
some French political question, write too much about 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 233 

it, and are then surprised because their copy is cut 
down, bowdlerised, eviscerated, or rejected altogether. 

I have referred to events in 1898 as exciting. The 
ensuing year opened amid still greater excitement. 
The battle of the newspapers over the Dreyfus 
revision raged fiercely, and the discussion of the case 
in public and private was keen. Go where you would, 
the affaire was sure to be brought up. 

Then in the middle of February, 1899, ensued the 
mysterious death of President Felix Faure. That 
came as a thunderclap to everybody. We heard it 
at the Daily Telegraph office, then near the Bourse, 
about ten o'clock in the evening. My colleague, Mr. 
Ozanne, and I were talking to Mr. d'Alton Shee, a 
young Frenchman of Irish descent, about his friend 
Wallon, a man who had gone out to try to see 
Captain Dreyfus in Devil's Island, and who was to 
write some reports from there for the Telegraph, as 
well as for the French newspaper to which he usually 
contributed. Suddenly there was a telephone ring, 
and the news of the President's death came. Mr. 
d'Alton Shee, who was to have received some money 
for transmission to his friend Wallon, had to go away 
without it, as the sudden death of the President of the 
Republic necessitated all the attention of the office. 
We had to set to work in order to collect details of 
the death, and this was a difficult thing to do at eleven 
o'clock at night. Then a biographical notice of the 
deceased President, the circumstances of his election, 
and a narrative of happenings during his tenure of his 
post, had to be transmitted to London. All this kept 
us at work until far into the night. 

On the day following President Faure's death Paris 



234 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

was full of the most extraordinary rumours and the 
most fearful reports of scandals. It was said that 
Felix Faure had died in the arms of a woman, that 
he had been poisoned by a belle Juive, who was in the 
pay of the Dreyfus syndicate, and that he had com- 
mitted suicide to avoid terrible revelations about 
himself, about his family, and about the family of his 
wife, whose father had been in trouble with the law, 
and so on. These rumours and reports attained such 
dimensions that the private secretary of the deceased 
President actually published in the columns of the 
Figaro an authentic narrative of M. Faure's move- 
ments and acts on the day of his death. By this it 
was proved that M. Faure did not leave the Ely see 
Palace by a secret exit on the evening of the i6th 
of February, 1899, and that he died in his own room 
after having been indisposed there for some hours 
before his death. All this did not prevent the dis- 
semination of scandalous gossip.^ On the day before 
the President's funeral M. Sebastien Faure, an 
Anarchist, published in his paper alleged full details, 
with plans, of the President's visit to a lady on the 
afternoon of his death, and of his removal in a dying 
condition from the lady's boudoir to the Elys^e. 
For weeks tongues wagged over all this scandalous 
gossip, and the lady was sometimes said to be the 
wife of a Belgian artist, and sometimes it was given 
out that she was a pretty actress at one of the 
subsidised theatres. Colour was lent to all these 
scandalous rumours by the fact, which was well 

^ There was also a rumour that a lady who had been visiting 
the President at the Elysee left a bunch of poisoned violets 
on the mantelpiece of his study. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 235 

known, that Felix Faure was fond of going about 
Paris occasionally in disguises. Sometimes he did 
not disguise at all, but drove about the streets in 
his ordinary clothes, not in a carriage but in a common 
fiacre, or fly. I have once or twice seen him driving 
in this way towards metropolitan districts which are 
by no means fashionable. Thus the mystery of his 
death deepened. What was true about it was that 
when he felt his last end approaching, he called his 
wife and begged her pardon for any wrongs that 
he might have done her during their long years of 
union. There was no priest at the Elys^e to attend 
the dying President, and it is recorded that somebody, 
probably the President's daughter, now married to 
a literary man, M. Goyau, threw open a window 
and shouted to the servants or guards to go for a 
priest. Anyhow, it is true that a priest attached 
to the Madeleine was stopped In the Faubourg 
St. Honors by a servitor at the Elysee, and was 
requested to go to see M. Faure, who was very ill. 
The ecclesiastic, who was returning from a dinner- 
party, and was not, in the circumstances, provided 
with the holy oils and so forth, called on a colleague 
and sent him to the Elysee, where he found the 
President in extremis. 

Fdix Faure was one of the most ornamental of the 
"civilian" Presidents of the Republic, and he was 
almost a soldier. It must be remembered that there 
were two military and picturesque Presidents, General 
Trochu, who did not hold office long, and MacMahon. 
Thiers was an undersized '' p^kin,'' Jules Grevy a 
solemn-faced and be-whiskered barrister, Carnot a 
rigid, geometrical figure with a black beard, Caslmir- 



236 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Perier a plain, prosaic person who might be any- 
body, while M. Loubet and M. Fallieres are of the 
successful yeoman or farmer type. Felix Faure was 
solidly grand, and at the same time was a fine specimen 
of a man. Some compared him to a general of the 
United States Army, others held that he looked Hke a 
successful London City man who was also a colonel 
of militia or volunteers. M. Faure, it must be 
remembered, saw a good deal of service in the war of 
1870-71 as a commander of mobiles, and he rode well. 
At army manoeuvres he usually galloped with the 
generals, and wore a specially smart suit of clothes 
with a peaked cap, which gave him a military appear- 
ance. He was also a grand man when en voyage. 
He travelled like a monarch, and it was said that the 
ex-tanner of Touraine and former ship-owner at 
Havre had his head turned by his position, and that 
he was rehearsing for the role of king or of emperor. 



CHAPTER XVII 

President Loubet — M. Deroulede's attempted coup d'etat — M. 
Loubet at home — M. Waldeck- Rousseau's return to politics 
— His career at the Bar — General the Marquis de Galliffet — 
From carpet-knight to hero — Home-coming of Dreyfus — 
Baffling the press — Fort Chabrol and its defender — The 
French and the Boers — Paul Kruger and President Loubet 
— The exhibition of 1900 — The Tsar and Tsaritsa at Com- 
piegne — RepubHcan ladies — Madame Waldeck-Rousseau 
and the cake. 

ON Saturday, the i8th of February, 1899, every- 
body connected with politics and newspapers 
was at Versailles for the election of a successor to 
President F^lix Faure. There was the traditional 
luncheon at the Hotel des Reservoirs, and then the 
lobbying, the gossiping, and the voting. To the tall 
and commanding F^lix Faure succeeds a dumpy little 
man, Emile Loubet, who has been several times a 
Cabinet Minister, and is known as a plain, practical 
politician, nowise brilliant, but a ready speaker, versed 
in the law, experienced also in other ways, and there 
are no scandals about him or his wife, or their 
relatives. The Nationalists call him " Panama " 
Loubet, but that does not matter, nor do the rotten 
eggs matter when they are thrown at his carriage 
as he drives back from Versailles, after his election 
to the highest office in the State. M. Emile Loubet 

237 



238 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

only shrugged his shoulders at the shouts of 
"Panama" and at the hurricane of putrid eggs. 
He consoles himself always, does M. Loubet, with 
mots. He has certain caustic and almost witty 
phrases ready to his tongue, and he can even, as a 
man once said, " lancer des traits de bonhomme 
acerbe." 

I was at the Elysde on the day of President 
Faure's funeral. It was the 23rd of February, 1899. 
M. Loubet came along in his carriage, escorted by 
cuirassiers, and walked into the mansion of mourning 
which he was soon to occupy. He seemed at the 
time to be the calmest, most self-possessed, and most 
matter-of-fact man whom I had ever beheld. Nothing 
moved him, not even the placing of the huge coffin or 
casket enclosing his predecessor in the funeral car. 
At the service at Notre Dame, I also saw M. Loubet 
unmoved. I have heard that his wife, Madame 
Loubet, took the new honours also in a matter-of-fact 
fashion. A phrase attributed to her at the time was, 
" Nous allons en augmentanty As everybody knows, 
both M. and Madame Loubet, like their immediate 
predecessor and their successors at the Elysee, are 
of humble provincial origin. They both come from 
Montelimar, in the South, or in the beginning of the 
South, where M. Loubet's father drove mules to 
market and where Madame Loubet's people sold pots, 
pans, and all manner of domestic utensils. 

On the evening of the day that President Faure 
was buried in the Cemetery of Pere La Chaise, M. 
Paul D^roulede tried his hand at a species of coup 
d'etat but failed. He wanted to get General Roget, 
who was returning to Reuilly barracks at the head 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 239 

of the regiments which had been at the funeral, to 
march on the Elys^e and capture the place. General 
Roget, a quiet, unassuming warrior, who looks as 
if he were a brother of Ernest Reyer, the composer 
of " Salammbo " and of ** Sigurd," would do nothing 
of the sort. So M. D^roulede was arrested, and 
his attempt at a coup dUtat was heartily hissed 
and ridiculed. Failing to effect a pronunciamiento in 
France, he went to Spain, the real land of pronuncia- 
mientos, and remained there until he was pardoned 
and permitted to return to the land of his birth in 
December, 1905. 

This was a very lively time for all newspaper people. 
During it we were reinforced at the Telegraph office 
by Dr. Dillon, who returned to Paris later on for 
the purpose of trying to meet Captain Dreyfus on 
his coming to France for the second court-martial. 
Comparative quiet ensued for a few months after the 
election of M. Loubet, but a great uproar was caused 
by the action of a Royalist, Baron de Cristiani, 
who, in a mad moment, attempted to assault the new 
President at the Auteuil races on Sunday, the 4th of 
June, 1899. The President's hat was struck, and the 
Baron was arrested. On the following Sunday — 
Grand Prix day — the whole of the course at Long- 
champs was guarded by an army of soldiers and 
police. This tremendous display of force led to 
the fall of the Cabinet, and M. Dupuy, who had been 
President of the Council since October, 1898, was 
succeeded by M. Waldeck- Rousseau. And in the 
meantime the Court of Cassation had ordered the 
revision of the Dreyfus case, and the Captain was 
coming home from Devil's Island in the cruiser Sfax 
to be tried by court-martial at Rennes. 



240 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Now ensued a momentous period, and the new 
Cabinet formed was expected to do great things. 
Here was Waldeck- Rousseau in power, after a long 
absence from active service in politics, and he had 
General the Marquis de Galliffet, another most 
interesting man, as his War Minister. M., or rather 
Dr., de Lanessan, his troubles in the question of Siam 
and his quondam connection with Portalis and 
Canivet being forgotten, becomes Minister of Marine; 
M. Millerand, the Socialist " Baron," is at the head 
of the Department of Commerce ; and M. Caillaux is 
Chancellor of the Exchequer. M. Delcass6, who 
seems immovable, remains at the Foreign Office. 

Of these men M. Waldeck- Rousseau and General 
de Galliffet were the most notable. Waldeck- Rousseau, 
whom I used to see frequently at the Palais de Justice 
after he had returned to the Bar, was, so to say, born 
in the law. His father was an advocate at Nantes, 
and he himself became a barrister at an early age. 
Entering the political arena, he captivated Gambetta, 
who had him as his Minister of the Interior from 
November, 1881, to January, 1882. He was sub- 
sequently in the Cabinet of Jules Ferry from 
February, 1883, to April, 1885. While he was at 
the Interior, Henri Rochefort labelled him Waldeck 
le pommadS, owing to the fact that he was always 
carefully dressed and groomed. M. Waldeck- 
Rousseau was generally, in fact, very neatly attired, 
and was often compared to a well-groomed English- 
man, although I have seen him at the Palais de Justice 
wearing very indifferent pantaloons under his advo- 
cate's gown. After Jules Ferry's fall in 1885, M. 
Waldeck- Rousseau was seen rarely at the Palais 




M. Waldeck-Rousseau. 



To face p. 240. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 241 

Bourbon. He went to the other Palais, that of the 
law, and had there a lucrative practice for long years. 
He was retained in the Panama affair for, I think, 
Charles de Lesseps. He acted as advocate for 
Max Lebaudy, the *' millionaire conscript," and 
was the first to unmask the frauds of the notorious 
Madame Humbert. While he was at the bar, M. 
Waldeck-Rousseau was elected a Senator, and in 
1895 his political friends put him forward? as a candi- 
date at the election for President of the Republic in 
succession to M. Casimir-Perier. 

There is no doubt that but for the terrible malady 
which made him a martyr, and caused his death, 
M. Waldeck-Rousseau would have become President 
of the Republic. He would have lent some dignity 
to the position. His wife, daughter of a fashionable 
tailor, who left her a large fortune, would have made 
an admirable Presidente. She would appear every 
whit as aristocratic as Madame la Marechale de 
MacMahon, Duchesse de Magenta, and would have 
known better than that lady how to treat the Republi- 
can parvenus and struggle for lifeurs, to use a word 
invented by Alphonse Daudet, who were invited to 
the Elysee. In spite of the amorous adventures with 
which he was credited when he was Minister of the 
Interior in the old days, M. Waldeck-Rousseau re- 
mained to the last a most devoted husband. Pious 
Catholics who remembered that he originated the law 
against the religious orders saw the hand of Providence 
in the afflictions which beset his wife and himself. 
Madame Waldeck-Rousseau was suffering as well as 
her husband. She was obliged to bear a most pain- 
ful operation in a convent which was under the ban 

17 



242 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

of the bill against monastic institutions brought in 
by her husband. The lady recovered after the opera- 
tion, but, later on, when her partner had to bear the 
knife of the surgical specialist, he died. The 
Catholics who blamed Waldeck-Rousseau were told 
that he did not intend to apply the measures against 
the monastic and conventual people so rigorously 
as they were applied by his successor, M. Combes. 
They were also reminded that the deceased states- 
man had as a personal friend a Dominican friar, 
Pere Vincent Maumus, who frequently saw him before 
he died. 

The other interesting man in the Waldeck-Rousseau 
Cabinet of 1899 was General the Marquis de Galliffet. 
This man is every inch a soldier, and is the smartest 
of soldiers even in his old age. He was furious 
because he had to retire from active service, having 
attained the age of sixty-five, although he only looked 
then about fifty. During the Second Empire the 
Marquis de Galliffet was one of the carpet-knights 
at the Elys6e. He was among those who " capered 
nimbly in a lady's chamber, to the lascivious pleasings 
of a lute," but he broke with all this and sought hard 
service as a cavalryman in Africa. In 1862 he married 
a daughter of the banker Charles Laffitte. In the 
Mexican War the Marquis de Galliffet was severely 
wounded in the stomach, and hovered for a time 
between life and death. The wound did not require 
that the Marquis should be provided with a ventre 
d' argent, as some have asserted. During the Franco- 
German War the Marquis de Galliffet was in the thick 
of the heaviest fighting. At Sedan he was in the 
cavalry charge which drew from King William of 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 243 

Prussia the exclamation, ' ' Ak ! les braves gens ! " 
The Marquis was made Brigadier-General on the 
field of battle for his bravery on this occasion. 
There was periodical controversy, however, as to 
whether General de Galliffet commanded in this 
famous charge or not. The honour was also claimed 
by General de Beauffremont. When the Commune 
was put down Galliffet entered Paris at the head of 
the troops. A serjeant brought to him Henri Roche- 
fort. The non-com. was holding a revolver over the 
head of the pamphleteer, and was ready to shoot him 
at a word or a nod from the General. " No, don't 
shoot him," said Galliffet; "they would say that I 
wanted revenge." Rochefort was accordingly taken 
to the prison at Versailles, whence he was subse- 
quently sent to the penal settlements of New Cale- 
donia with others who had been associated with the 
Commune. He owes a deep debt to General de 
Galliffet. 

There used to be a rumour in Paris that General 
de Galliffet was the real originator, with M. Joseph 
Reinach, of the agitation in favour of Captain Dreyfus. 
Of this I know nothing, except that M. Reinach, when 
engaged as an officer of the territorial army at some 
manoeuvres, acted as aide-de-camp to the Marquis de 
Galliffet.^ The two also foregathered a good deal in 
political circles and in salons in Paris. I do not 
think anybody could wring this secret, if secret it be, 
out of the General himself. He is one of the mutest 
men in Paris when approached for questioning pur- 
poses. When he does vouchsafe a reply it is an 

^ I quote an authority later on who shows that General de 
Galliffet took M. Reinach on his staff to please the War Minister. 



244 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

enigmatic, Delphic oracle sort of utterance, and the 
cleverest man could make very little out of it. As 
becomes the beau sabreur that he is, General the 
Marquis de Galliffet has had many an adventure of 
the sentimental kind. He was a prime favourite with 
the ladies. I have heard that once when at Madame 
Adam's he ventured to pass his hand over that lady's 
splendid shoulders, and for his boldness he received a 
light slap in the face. I do not know if this is an 
invention of some French father of lies or not, and 
Madame Adam, like General de Galliffet, is not addicted 
to giving secrets away to inquirers, nor to answering 
indiscreet questions. My informant, who had the 
story from somebody else, believes that the clever 
Madame Adam was talking volubly and excitedly 
about politics, or about the Dreyfus case, and that 
the General, to calm her, or to show his apathy for 
the subject of conversation, passed his hand over her 
alabaster shoulders. 

The smartest of French generals did not remain 
throughout in the famous Waldeck- Rousseau Cabinet, 
which lasted three years, from June, 1899 to June, 1902. 
The Marquis de Galliffet resigned in May, 1900, and 
was succeeded by that entertaining man. General 
Andre, who has since written those illuminating 
memoirs for the Matin in which he "gave away" 
some of his former political colleagues. 

This Waldeck- Rousseau Cabinet was not formed a 
month when excitement arose over the arrival of 
Captain Dreyfus on board the Sfax. There was 
a good deal of money spent by the newspapers in 
trying to find out where he was to land. Some 
thought that he would come to La Rochelle, others to 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 245 

Brest, others to Nantes. Dr. E. J. Dillon went for 
the Telegraph to Brest, and hired a boat there. 
Some millionaires had their yachts cruising outside 
Brest, and watched for the coming of the Sfax 
with keen expectancy. Nobody seemed to have 
thought of Quiberon, that little point on the 
Breton coast which is famous in history. It was 
to this place that the Sfax came, on July the 
I St, 1899. No journalists save two were there, out 
of the multitude of pressmen watching all along the 
Breton coast, and outside the naval ports. The two 
journalists at Quiberon were Emile Massard, of the 
Nationalist Patrie, and Arthur Lynch, the "man 
for Galway." M. Massard had, by some occult means, 
got to know the secret about Quiberon, and he sold 
it for one thousand francs to the Correspondent of an 
American paper, who sent Mr. Lynch down to the 
little Breton promontory. Both M. Massard and Mr. 
Lynch could only chronicle the arrival of Captain 
Dreyfus. They could not speak to him, for he was 
hurried off, closely guarded, to the town of Rennes, 
immediately after he had disembarked from the 
Sfax. 

There is no need to go back to the second court- 
martial at Rennes. It was a long and wearisome 
business, ending in September, 1899, by the con- 
demnation of the unfortunate prisoner, who was 
subsequently released on pardon by President Loubet, 
and was enabled to return to his long-suffering family. 
There were subsequently spread some ugly rumours 
about the released man, his family, and his supporters. 
There was a report that M. Dreyfus did not feel 
sufficiently grateful to those who had moved heaven 



246 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

and earth in his cause ; nay, it was even said that he 
resented, as a soldier and a patriot, the excessive zeal 
of his partisans. A dark family trouble was also 
hinted at. But I cannot say anything definite about 
these flying rumours and reports. In any case, M. 
Dreyfus lived after his release in the closest retire- 
ment, first in the South of France and then in Switzer- 
land. It was not until his "rehabilitation" in 1906 
that he began to show himself in public in Paris. 

While the court-martial was still in progress at 
Rennes, Parisians were both amazed and amused by 
the extraordinary conduct of Jules Gudrin, an adven- 
turous journalist who had founded and edited an 
anti- Jewish paper in which he hotly attacked the 
Dreyfusards and the Government. Gu^rin was a 
man who was once so destitute in Paris that he 
was obliged to work as a d^bardeur or docker 
on the quays, where he assisted in loading and un- 
loading river barges and canal boats. Eventually 
receiving some money, he founded his anti-Semitic 
paper, which was published in a house in the Rue de 
Chabrol, near the Gare du Nord. He was impli- 
cated with Paul Ddroulede, M. Buffet the Royalist, 
and others for treason to the State, and was summoned 
to appear before the High Court at the Senate. 
D^roulede and Buffet left France, and Gu^rin, with 
some of his staff, remained in the printing office. 
This they strongly barricaded, and it became known 
as Fort Chabrol. The besieged men were armed 
with revolvers and rifles, and threatened to shoot 
the first police official who should get inside the fort. 
For some weeks the street was filled by day and 
night with contingents of police, municipal guards, 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 247 

and even troops of the line. Every night I, in 
common with other correspondents of newspapers, 
remained for several hours outside Fort Chabrol, 
waiting to see what would happen. It was expected 
that suddenly the forces of the law would enter the 
fort at any cost and capture those inside. Then there 
was a question of blowing up the place with dynamite, 
but, after all the display of force, the weary waiting 
and watching, nothing ever happened. Jules Guerin, 
his supplies of bread and sausages from friends or 
colleagues in a house contiguous to his fort being cut 
off by the police, capitulated, and was sent to a real 
fort for a term of ten years. So ended the great farce 
of Fort Chabrol, which has been imitated, with some 
variations, by men at war with the law, in other parts 
of France. In one of these cases a provincial Fort 
Chabrol was blown up by dynamite, and the man 
wanted was captured. I think that Jules Guerin was 
allowed to defy the authorities for the long time that 
he did so owing to the disinclination of M. Waldeck- 
Rousseau, then Minister of the Interior, as well as 
President of the Council, to take any measures of 
exceptional rigour against the man and those with 
him, one of whom died in the fort through privation. 
This was also the time of the war in South Africa. 
We had no entente cordiale then, and the French, 
almost to a man and woman, were in favour of the 
Boers. I have heard men in caf^s shout " Vivent les 
Boers ! " when they saw Englishmen about, and I 
have known those in Paris who gloated over the 
reverses of General Gatacre, General Duller, and 
Lord Methuen. All this is now forgotten. The 
French, in fact, began to forget the Boers when the 



248 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

English were obtaining the upper hand in the Trans- 
vaal. It was a case of "nothing succeeds like suc- 
cess." While the Boers appeared to be winning they 
were applauded in Paris and Berlin. When they were 
failing the French shrugged their shoulders, and said 
" Que voulez-vous ? " Paul Kruger had proof of this 
when he came to Paris in November, 1900. The 
Nationalists prepared an ovation for him, and he was 
acclaimed with a good deal of enthusiasm at the Gare 
du Nord when he was leaving. Before his departure 
he went to the Elys^e, where he was only offered cold 
comfort. As he was complaining of his sad lot to 
President Loubet, that gentleman threw his hands up 
in the air and said " Que voulez-vous ? " 

I must not forget that this year of 1900 was the 
year of the Exhibition. Just before that great fair was 
opened Count Benedetti, the French Ambassador in 
Berlin ere the outbreak of the war of 1870-71, died in 
the Paris residence of Princess Mathilde Bonaparte, 
or as she preferred to call herself, Princess Mathilde 
Napoleon. None of the new generation took any 
interest in him, and only a few writers of the old 
fogey school recalled in their articles about him that 
he had been gruffly treated by the King of Prussia, 
afterwards Emperor William, at Ems, in July, 1870, 
and that immediately war between France and 
Germany was declared. 

As for the Paris Exhibition of 1900, which was 
opened ^by President Loubet about Easter, I must 
say that I found it rather more interesting than the 
preceding " Expositions universelles " which I had 
seen. What struck me most on the opening day 
was the flight of time. It seemed to me that only 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 249 

shortly before I was among those accompanying 
President Carnot around the Champ de Mars when 
the preparations for the Exhibition of 1889 were in 
an inchoate condition. And yet more than eleven 
years had elapsed between the two events to which 
I am alluding. In that space of time many strange 
things had happened, and many men whom I had 
known, either intimately or only casually, had dis- 
appeared from view for ever. My enjoyment of the 
new exhibition was accordingly not altogether untinged 
with melancholy. So it will be with other exhibitions, 
if I live to see them. In my view these periodical 
fairs, recurring every decade or so, are reminders 
to those of a certain age of the passing of the 
years and the instability of earthly things. There is 
nothing so gay, joyous, and brilliant as the opening 
and the beginning of a Paris Exhibition, nothing so 
sad as its close, in the gloomy fall of the year, when 
the trees are becoming bare, and when fogs begin 
to rise over the river. 

Just before the Exhibition closed M. Waldeck- 
Rousseau's Cabinet had the narrowest shave from 
shipwreck that I have ever known. The Chambers 
assembled on the 8th of November, 1900. Imme- 
diately there were questions about the strikes, about 
the extradition to Belgium of Sipido, who had fired 
at the Prince of Wales, now King Edward VII., at 
Brussels, and about other matters. The Government 
was hard pressed, but obtained a majority in extremis. 
Thus M. Waldeck- Rousseau was able to bring in the 
Associations Bill which was applied with so much 
determination by his successor, M. Combes. He was 
also able to prepare for the second coming of the Tsar 



250 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

and Tsaritsa to France, but not to Paris. I have seen, 
by the way, that the calling of the Emperor of Russia 
and his consort " Tsar " and " Tsaritsa " has been 
strongly contested, and the older forms of the titles, 
"Czar" and "Czarina," have been defended. The 
titles "Tsar" and "Tsaritsa" were first introduced 
into England by Dr. E. J. Dillon, writing in the 
Daily Telegraph, and they were adopted in nearly 
every other newspaper, in spite of some opposition. 
Dr. Dillon, in fact, showed that the older titles, which 
had always been used in England in referring to the 
Emperor of Russia and his consort, were not only 
inaccurate but ridiculous, and as he is an admitted 
authority on all matters appertaining to Russia, he 
must be right in the reform which he carried out. 

I met the Doctor again on the occasion of this very 
visit of the Tsar. It was in the middle of September, 
1 90 1. The excitement in Paris was great, and the 
Nationalists, who had been triumphant at the muni- 
cipal elections of May, 1900, were making elaborate 
preparations to receive the Imperial couple. M. 
Waldeck- Rousseau, however, set himself deliberately, 
and with his usual cold, calculating determination, to 
the work of spoiling the game of the Nationalists. 
These, after the elections, turned up in a majority at 
the Hotel de Ville. There were fifty-two of them 
against the twenty-eight Socialists and others support- 
ing the Ministry, in the Municipal Council. They 
threatened to be masters of the city, and to make their 
influence felt in the Chamber and elsewhere. M. 
Waldeck- Rousseau made them swallow a very large 
snake when he arranged that the Tsar and the 
Tsaritsa should land at Dunkirk, and then come on 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 251 

to Compiegne to be lodged there in the famous palace 
which had been one of the favourite residences of 
Napoleon the Third and the Empress Eugenie. This 
resolution on the part of the President of the Council 
disappointed, not only the Nationalists, but also the 
newspaper men. These had fully counted on the 
arrival of the Tsar in Paris, and even down to the 
last moment it was expected that the Imperial visitors 
would come up from Compiegne to the capital at 
least for a few hours. Nothinof of the sort. M. 
Waldeck- Rousseau, the artful and the able, kept them 
where he wanted to keep them, in order to spite 
and to anger the hated Nationalists, who execrated 
both him and President Loubet. The pretext on 
which Tsar Nicholas was retained at Compiegne 
was that although he would be certain of a hearty 
and warm welcome in the capital, the Government 
could not guarantee that he would be safe from 
French or Italian Anarchists, or from Russian 
Terrorists. So the Tsar and the Tsaritsa remained 
at Compiegne from the i8th to the 21st of 
September, 1901, the Nationalists and the innocent 
citizens of Paris, who were ignorant of the wiles 
of M. Waldeck-Rousseau, fondly and foolishly hoping 
to the last moment that the Tsar and his consort 
would come, if only for a flying visit, to the 
metropolis. 

The Tsar and the Tsaritsa were whisked away by 
train to the once sacred and celebrated city of Rheims, 
where they visited the cathedral wherein Kings of 
France were formerly crowned, having duly attended 
one of the most imposing military reviews ever 
organised by the authorities of the Third Republic. 



252 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Everybody was glad when the Tsar went, as the 
tension during his stay at Compiegne was trying to 
the nerves. That little town was the centre of such 
interest and excitement during the Imperial visit 
as its inhabitants had never known before, not even 
in the days of Napoleon III. And the Tsar, if he 
be given to any sort of retrospective reflection, must 
have remembered what he had read or been told 
about Compiegne and its former associations when 
he found himself and his consort surrounded by the 
ladies of the noblesse Rdp2iblicaine, with Madame 
Waldeck- Rousseau at their head. ^ 

^ ^'Noblesse Republicaine'' is a phrase attributed to Madame 
Floquet. Madame Waldeck-Rousseau on her side was credited 
with the phrase '"'A nous la galette^' or "The cake is ours," 
and another RepubHcan lady once said in bad French, "C'est 
nous qui sont les Princesses." 



CHAPTER XVIII 

M. Emile Combes at work — The Humbert hoax — M. Wal- 
deck- Rousseau and the hoax — The " biggest fraud of 
the century" — Maitre Labori and the Humberts — M. 
Jaures and M. Gohier — The expulsions of the Orders — 
Rising in Brittany — Death of Sir Campbell Clarke — Death 
ofj Emile Zola — His enemies and his friends — Zola's 
children — Some famous French journalists — Death of M. 
de Blowitz — The suicide of Sir Hector Macdonald in a 
Paris hotel — The coming of King Edward — The entente 
cordiale and its results. 

AS I propose to deal with the question of the 
Church in France in a separate chapter, I 
shall only note here the application of the Associa- 
tions Law and its immediate consequences. The 
law was applied from October, 1901, but only in 
a mild manner. Then occurred the General Election 
of April, 1902, the voyage of President Loubet to 
St. Petersburg, and the resignation of M. Waldeck- 
Rousseau, which brought to the front M. Emile 
Combes, the man who nearly swept all the religious 
communities out of France inanu militari. But 
before M. Combes became President of the Council 
we had the Humbert hoax, which entertained Europe 
and America during many months. I knew some 
of Madame Humbert's dupes, and I knew her brother, 
Romain Daurignac, as well as one of her lawyers in 

253 



254 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

a business way. Romain Daurignac always reminded 
me of the Southerner typified in the illustrations of 
Alphonse Daudet's " Tartarin de Tarascon." He 
looked like that boastful Nimrod, but, unlike Tartarin, 
he was no noodle, and had ably assisted his sister 
in carrying on the hoax. The history of the Hum- 
bert swindle has been well threshed out in the 
newspapers. Everybody has read of the opening of 
the safe, the coffre-fort, in Madame Humbert's house, 
and of its blank emptiness. The capture of the 
Humberts, father, mother, and daughter, in Madrid 
is also familiar to all readers of morning and evening 
newspapers. 

There was one aspect of the case which was not 
known to the newspaper readers. This was the 
attitude of M. Waldeck- Rousseau in the affair, and 
the causes of that attitude. M. Waldeck- Rousseau, 
v/ho resigned office almost immediately after the 
creditors of Madame Humbert assailed her, had 
denounced the Crawford estate — which was the pivot 
used by the woman and her brother, Romain Dauri- 
gnac, to bluff the lawyers, financiers, and business 
men who fell into their trap — as a gigantic myth 
and fraud. It was while engaged as counsel in 
a case before a provincial Court of Justice that M. 
Waldeck- Rousseau uttered his denunciation and 
used the words ''the biggest fraud of the century." 
Yet for six years after the denunciation Madame 
Humbert was allowed, unchallenged, unmolested, to 
continue her systematic swindling, and to add to 
the number of her victims and dupes, some of whom 
were not like the Lille merchants fooled, who could 
afford to lose millions of francs, but were poor. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 255 

struggling persons who banked with her brother 
and believed in his financial stability. And while 
M. Waldeck- Rousseau was in power nothing was 
done against the Humberts. Action was only taken 
just about the time that he resigned — 4th June, 1902. 
The reason of M. Waldeck-Rousseau's inaction 
and apparent apathy as regards the Humberts is 
to be found in the fact that he was practically engaged 
in helping a prominent politician to recover a large 
sum from the swindlers. It was only by bleeding 
new dupes that the Humberts could repay the 
prominent politician. On the other hand, the 
Humberts were run to earth when M. Combes suc- 
ceeded M. Waldeck- Rousseau principally because 
the financial agent, M. Cattaui, who has been called 
a usurer, and who had the most to gain by their ruin, 
had as his usual counsel or advocate M. Valle, 
Minister of Justice in the Cabinet which succeeded 
that of M. Waldeck-Rousseau. M. Urbain Gohier 
says boldly in his " Leur Republique " : " L'escro- 
querie avait dure vingt ans, parce quelle avait pour 
complices tous les personnages influents de la Repub- 
lique, politiciens, magistrats, parasites de tout ordre, 
qui empruntaient aux voleurs I'argent vole, qui pro- 
fitaient de leur luxe, qui sollicitaient leur patronage — 
et qui se taisaient en retour." And Maitre Labori, 
advocate of Dreyfus, and also defender of the Hum- 
berts, said at their trial : '* Si nous ouvrions des scelles 
qui sont la si nous jetions au vent de la publicity 
tous ces noms et parmi eux les plus illustres, de ceux 
qui etaient prets, il y a un an, a se faire les serviteurs 
de Madame Humbert, qui pourrait dire hautement 
qu'elle ne leur a jamais rien demande, il serait facile 



256 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

de faire ici du scandale. Je vous assure que je 
pourrai enumerer les noms de ceux qui, craignant 
peut-etre que je ne fusse de ceux qui, parfois, a 
la barre, songent a irriter des passions personelles, 
m'ont fait supplier de ne point les compromettre, de 
ne point les perdre, et de ne point les deshonorer. 
Qu'ils soient rassures, je ne prononcerai pas un nom." 

M. Gohier, quoting Maitre Labori's assurance to 
the compromised persons, says sarcastically, that a 
people like the French, who saw some of the principal 
men of the State in the Panama and in twenty other 
swindles, need not have been astonished to find the 
same men in the Humbert affair. In denouncing 
such persons Maitre Labori would not have dis- 
honoured them, for universal suffrage does not 
reject infamy, but is fascinated by it. The greatest 
rascals of the regime have attained honours and powers 
only after the most public exposure of their ignominy. 
It is with full knowledge of what they have done 
that France chooses them as masters. 

M. Gohier would have us believe, after he emits 
these observations, that M. Jaures had a deep 
personal interest in the Humbert affair. The latter, 
we must remember, is M, Gohier's bugbear, his Cati- 
line, his Verres. He attacks M. Rouvier and M. 
Aristide Briand and reminds them of their offences 
of old — not only offences of the political or the 
financial kind, but also of the moral order. He de- 
nounces " Baron " Millerand, sham Socialist ; the 
*' Vidame de Hault de Pressense," who tried to "tap" 
Dr. Leyds, Paul Kruger's agent ; M. Clemenceau ; 
*' Citizen " Brousse, former president of the Paris 
Municipal Council, who " placed flowers and prayed 




Camille Pelletan. 



To face p. 257 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 257 

on the tomb of Queen Victoria," and many other 
prominent pubHc men. His greatest wrath is re- 
served for M. Jaures, whom he refers to as the " Mi- 
rabeau des Mufles " and worse. But to prove his 
assertion that M. Jaures was one of the men most 
compromised in the Humbert affair, M. Gohier can 
only advance two statements of fact. One is that the 
Socialist orator wrote in his paper that the Humbert 
dossiers were "une paperasserie sans int^ret," and the 
other that M. Jaures did not vote in the Chamber for 
the inquiry relative to the great frauds perpetrated by 
the son and the daughter-in-law of a former Minister 
of Justice of the Third Republic. 

The Combes Ministry, formed soon after the 
unmasking of the Humbert frauds, drew attention 
to itself owing, as is well known, to its vigorous 
action against the religious communities. M. Emile 
Combes, Senator, doctor of medicine, formerly an 
ecclesiastical student and professor in a Catholic 
seminary or college for the training of priests, 
proved himself to be the most terrible opponent that 
the Church of Rome has ever had to encounter in 
France. He did not "sap a solemn creed with 
solemn sneer," like Voltaire, nor did he merely use 
"the poisoned arrows of criticism," like Renan. He 
became President of the Council, Minister of the 
Interior and of Public Worship or Cultes. In this 
triple capacity he had formidable power, and he used 
it unsparingly. Voltaire and Renan only wrote — 
he was a man of action. His principal colleagues 
or coadjutors in the Cabinet were M. Delcass^ still 
at the Foreign Office ; General Andr4 War Minister ; 
M. Camille Pelletan, head of the Naval Department, 

18 



258 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

much to the entertainment of the Opposition gallery ; 
M. Vall4 Keeper of the Seals, and the indispensable 
M. Rouvier, who had acquired his business experi- 
ence in the office of a Greek merchant of Marseilles, 
as head of the Exchequer. 

These Ministers, as well as President Loubet, 
gave a free hand to M. Combes in the war that was 
to be waged against the religious people. They 
did not attempt to interfere with the formidable little 
man, who had everything in his hands that was 
necessary for the unequal contest against the black- 
robed persons who were supposed to be conspiring 
against the Republic, and whose milliards^ since 
found to be as phantasmal as the millions of Madame 
Humbert, were wanted by the State. 

We saw strange scenes in Paris when the redoubt- 
able M. Combes began his campaign. Soldiers and 
policemen were engaged for weeks in hustling Jesuits, 
Dominicans, Franciscans, Oblates, Barnabites, Re- 
demptorists and the rest out of their homes. Nuns 
were hustled too, and the Catholics here and there in 
Paris tried to make a stand, but they had soon to 
retreat before the troops, the gendarmes, and the 
police. The war reached its highest point during 
the fetes in England for the Coronation of King 
Edward the Seventh. In July, 1902, the-Catholic 
Bretons rose and made a more effective stand than 
their co-religionists in Paris. The troops and 
gendarmes sent to expel nuns from their convents 
were attacked with energy. Several officers of the 
line who were ordered to besiege convents refused 
to do the work and were duly punished, the chorus 
of the backers of "that strong man who knows 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 259 

what he wants," namely M. Combes, singing " Serve 
them right." And M. Combes did effectively what 
he wanted to do. There was no vacillation, no 
shilly-shallying, no temporising, no giving in before 
tears, protests, expostulations, threats. It was all 
done thoroughly, and M. Combes, spoiled priest 
and formerly an erudite expounder of the philosophy 
of St. Thomas Aquinas, made coarse jokes about 
the nuns to whom he was giving opportunities to 
find husbands and lovers after their liberation from 
conventual bondage. 

During that summer of 1902 I had some rude 
awakenings. I was working alone in the Telegraph 
office from the nth of August to the nth of 
September, writing the whole of the Paris corre- 
spondence. On the night of the 27th of August 
I was staggered by the news that Sir Campbell 
Clarke had died at Uckfield, in Sussex, where he 
and Lady Clarke were staying with Miss Matilda 
Levy. Only about a fortnight before his death 
Sir Campbell Clarke had passed through Paris on 
his way to England from Aix-les-Bains. Had he 
died in Paris his death would have attracted great 
attention, and his funeral would have been imposing, 
as he was not only a celebrity who knew all the 
artistic and theatrical people, and many of the 
politicians and financiers, but he was also an officer of 
the Legion of Honour. As he died in England the 
French took no interest in his passing, and the 
obituary notices in the newspapers were few and 
meagre. In the following month, September, I was 
startled by the mysterious death of another man whom 
I knew, Emile Zola. I was at the time enjoying a 



260 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

holiday, and received the news of Zola's death at 
Aix-la-Chapelle. Nobody seemed to be able to give 
any explanation for that death except that it was 
a case of asphyxiation or suffocation in an ill- ventilated 
bedroom. Yet M. and Madame Zola had been 
livino- for many years in that house in the Rue de 
Bruxelles, and had every opportunity of seeing 
that it was in proper order and thoroughly fit for 
habitation. I knew that Zola was always, as he 
said himself, frileux^ or sensitive to cold, and 
that he liked overheated rooms. In any case, the 
attributed cause of the novelist's death, if not believed 
by everybody, was at least regarded with suspicion. 
This sort of death from asphyxiation in rooms 
seems to be peculiar to Paris. You hardly ever 
hear of deaths from such causes in other large cities. 
Among Parisians, when anything goes wrong, char- 
coal fumes or stoves are brought into operation, 
and lives are ended easily and without noise. When 
all was up with Gabriel Syveton, the arriviste, 
who became a Deputy and treasurer of the Patriotic 
League, and when he was about to be branded 
as a robber and to be compromised by the state- 
ments of his stepdaughter, he falls down near a 
stove and is asphyxiated. Emile Zola had not 
the same motives for seeking his end by asphyxiation 
as Gabriel Syveton had ; but it is certain that for 
some time before his death he was no longer the 
strong, self-assertive, and fearlessly independent man 
that he had been in the days before the sale of his 
novels decreased. Then, he had the emotions of 
the Dreyfus case, and above all the fearful indict- 
ment brought against his dead father by Ernest 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 261 

Judet, of the Petit Journal. The case of Zola's 
father, who had committed some peculations while 
an officer of minor rank in the French Army, 
was often referred to as a striking instance of that 
mania for ''disinterring corpses," or " raking up dead 
bodies," which prevailed during the Dreyfus agitation. 
There is no doubt that this disinterment of Zola's 
father, the Dreyfus case, and the prospect of un- 
popularity as a writer after having been one of the 
most active and successful authors of his generation, 
preyed heavily on Zola's mind. He used to say 
some years before his death that he made it a 
practice every morning when he rose "to swallow 
a certain amount of snakes " — "avaler des couleuvres " 
— during the day. This was in reference to the 
unfavourable criticisms that might be passed on his 
books, one of those stinging condemnations like that, 
for instance, of Anatole France,^ who subsequently 
lauded Zola's intervention in the Dreyfus case. 
When he died Judet, his tormentor, wrote that the 
indictment against his father was too big a snake for 
the novelist, and that it choked him. There were 
others besides Judet who attacked Zola after his 

^ Here is Anatole France's condemnation of Zola's work 
as an author : — 

" II ignore la beaute des mots comme il ignore la beaute des 
choses. II prete a tons ses personnages I'affolement de I'ordure. 
En ecrivant ' La Terre ' il a donne les Georgiques de la crapule. 
. . . Son oeuvre est mauvaise et il est un de ces malheureux dont 
on pent dire qu'il vaudrait mieux qu'ils ne fussent pas nes. . . . Je 
ne lui nierai point sa detestable gloire. Personne avant lui n'avait 
eleve un si haut tas d'immondices. Jamais homme n'avait fait 
un pareil effort pour avilir I'humanite, insulter a toutes les images 
de la beaute et de I'amour, nier tout ce qui est bon et tout ce qui 
est bien, ... M, Zola est digne d'une profonde pitie." 



262 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

connection with the Dreyfus case. It had long 
been supposed that Zola, whatever may have been 
his morality as a bachelor, was a most steady 
married man, devoted to his wife and leading with 
her a prosaic pot-au-feu life. His enemies, how- 
ever, discovered, after the publication of the letter 
'' J'accuse,'' that Zola had a liaison with his wife's 
maid, who bore him two children, and that Madame 
Zola, who adored her husband, allowed and even 
sanctioned the liaison. This was all quite true, 
and in 1906 Madame Zola took the necessary 
steps to have the children legally authorised to bear 
the novelist's name.^ There was also an accusation 
hurled at Zola before his death, to the effect that 
he refused to help his struggling sister-in-law. Emile 
Zola sleeps in Montmartre Cemetery, which is quite 
close to the scenes of his struggles and of his suc- 
cesses. He lived in the district near the great 
cemetery when he was only an obscure hack ; he 
was in lodgings there long before he became 
known as an author ; and when at last he reached 
the golden goal he took a large house in the 
Rue Ballu, whence he afterwards moved to a finer 
mansion in the Rue de Bruxelles, where he died. 
In the Montmartre Cemetery he is the neighbour, 
if the word may be employed in the melancholy 
connection, of Ernest Renan, Heinrich Heine, Dumas 
the younger, Berlioz, L60 Delibes, the composer 
of "■ Lakme," and Stendhal or Beyle, the immortal 
writer of " La Chartreuse de Parme." 

^ The mother of these children was with Zola during 
his brief exile in London, where he wrote " Fecondite," his last 
novel but one. It was the case of " Hagar " over again. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 263 

A few months before Zola's funeral in Montmartre 
Cemetery I had attended in the same place the 
burial of another man of letters, Henry Fouquier. 
He died in December, 1901, comparatively young. 
I often met Fouquier at Tortoni's, where he was 
in the habit of dashing off his marvellous articles. 
He had worn himself to a shadow by hard work. 
He wrote "social" leaders for the Figaro and for 
about half a dozen other daily papers. At one time 
his prose preponderated in the Press, and nearly 
every paper you took up had an article, always 
readable and interesting, signed by Henry Fouquier. 
He went down suddenly, like Zola, and the boulevards 
knew him no more. It was written of him with truth, 
that " sa vie avait ^te des plus fievreuses et des plus 
remplies." This may also be said of many an English 
journalist too. Fouquier was a chroniqtieur. He 
excelled in taking up floating facts and fancies and 
building articles out of them or on them. They 
were "airy nothings," but he made them substantial 
reading. The chronique system was invented, 
in its modern form at least, by one Eugene Guinot, 
who about 1840 wrote in the Siecle over the 
signature " Pierre Durand." He was the historio- 
grapher of small events, a veritable "chronicler of 
small beer," a gossiper on petty scandals, petty life- 
dramas, and potins de Paris. As a man said, "II 
enregistre tout ce qui fit partie, sinon de I'histoire, 
du moins de I'historiette de son temps." He had 
imitators, and then writers who distanced him, such 
as Nestor Roqueplan, Jules Janin, Madame Emile 
de Girardin, Paul d'lvry, Rochefort, Scholl, Villemot, 
Alberic Second, Alphonse Karr, About, Albert 



264 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Wolff, Henry Fouquier, Henry Maret. These were 
the journalistic giants, famous long before the pithy 
and practical M. Harduin of the Matin was known. 
Many of the older chroniclers were inspired, exploited, 
and even bullied into fame by Villemessant, the 
linendraper who ruled the Figaro with a rod of 
iron, and never wrote a line. He knew what the 
public wanted, and he went everywhere — to the 
theatres, the greenrooms, the clubs, such as they 
were then, to Tortoni's, and to the " Librarie nouvelle " 
on the boulevards, once a rendezvous of celebrities, for 
subjects to be written up by his men in chroniques 
which were talked about for a week. 

In January, 1903, another famous journalist — not 
of the stamp of those whom I have just mentioned, 
although had he written for the French Press he might 
have ranked amongst them — passed away. M. Oppert 
de Blowitz died on January 17, 1903, about a month 
after his colleagues of the English Press had presented 
him with a souvenir of their esteem and veneration. 
Mr. Farman, then on the Standard, organised the 
presentation, and asked me to take part in it. As I 
had not been amongst those whom M. de Blowitz 
condescended to patronise in the days of his fame, 
I did not subscribe to the souvenir. I must say, 
however, that at the time I did not know that M. de 
Blowitz was so near his end, and I had also forgotten 
the fact that, as Mr. Farman wrote, he had been 
perhaps the greatest of journalists. I did not quite 
realise this until I read the Memoirs of Prince 
Hohenlohe, which show conclusively the important 
part played by the Paris Correspondent of the Times 
in European politics after the war of 1870-71. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 265 

The news of the famous Correspondent's death on 
the evening of January 17, 1903, reached us at the 
office of the Telegraph soon after he had breathed 
his last. I was the means of propagating the news 
through Paris, for after I left the office I went to Herr 
Spiess's restaurant and brasserie on the boulevards, 
which was then a meeting-place of pressmen and also 
of persons connected with the stage. I told the news 
to Herr Spiess, an Austrian who knew M. de Blowitz 
well, and he was staggered by it. " What ! the great 
Blowitz dead }'' It was but too true. Then he gave 
the news to French pressmen, who immediately tele- 
phoned it to their editors, and went to the house of 
the great Correspondent for full confirmation of the 
event. After all, there was comparatively little 
written in the French newspapers about the death. 
The fact was that many of Blowitz's old Press friends, 
those who knew him well, had joined the majority 
before him, and to the younger generation he was, if 
not unknown, at least overlooked as one of the past. 

Two months after the death of the Times Corre- 
spondent we had another startling event — the suicide 
of General Sir Hector Macdonald at the Hotel Regina, 
in the Rue de Rivoli. Very few people knew that 
the General was staying in Paris. He was on his way 
home to answer the charges brought against him in 
Ceylon. The news of his death by his own hand was 
first given out to the Press by an English doctor who 
had been called in by the landlord of the hotel, but 
whose services were unavailing. The General was 
dead when the doctor came, and nothing could be 
done but to wrap his martial cloak around him until 
the undertakers came. It was one of the most 



266 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

melancholy events that the English newspaper 
Correspondents ever had to record. Some of them 
were deeply affected by the awful affair. My friend 
H. Cozens- Hardy, of the Morning Leader, was one 
of the first to hear of the great soldier's death. ^ 

While these deaths were occurring the expulsions of 
religious Orders were being carried out relentlessly by 
M. Combes, and in the meantime serious charges 
were brought against his son and private secretary. 
A journalist of Grenoble, one Besson, accused M. 
Edgar ^ Combes of having used his position under his 
father at the Ministry of the Interior for the purpose 
of raising money from the Carthusian monks. The 
Prior of the Grande Chartreuse was approached by 
persons from Paris who told him that by paying a 
large sum of money the monks would be allowed to 
remain in France. The hubbub caused by M. Besson 
was soon overshadowed by the news that King 
Edward the Seventh was coming to Paris. The 
monks of the Grande Chartreuse left France with 
many others of their cloth, the affair against M. 
Combes junior was hushed up, and Paris prepared 
for the royal visit, which took place in May, 1903. 
A few days before the King's coming I and my 
colleagues of the Telegraph were at luncheon with 
the Hon. Harry Lawson at an establishment in the 
Champs Elysees. Mr. Lawson was naturally full of 
the King's visit, and commented on the change 

^ Sir Hector Macdonald's death in Paris was, I have since 
heard, doubted in England and Scotland, but I have no con- 
firmation of the report that he has been seen alive in his native 
country recently. This, I think, was the gossip of soldiers who 
had served under him. 

2 M. Combes, jun., died in April, 1907. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 267 

brought about which made such a visit possible. As 
he justly remarked, only a few months before the 
French were for Kruger, and cries of ''A das les 
Anglais ! " were not infrequent in Paris. The King 
made a change in the feelings of the French, and 
brought about that entente cordiale, which has 
most undoubtedly worked wonders. It has actually 
influenced not only official France, but has permeated 
the people. After it was established, caricatures of 
the English, sneers at John Bull and his island, even 
jibes and jokes about the British tourists and their 
clothes, all disappeared. The British tourist, though 
garbed in the most aggressive manner and wearing 
illumination stockings, walked along the boulevards 
with impunity. People no longer stared at Englishmen 
and Englishwomen who were apparently dressed for 
golfing, and stood forth as conspicuous figures in 
the public thoroughfares. The gamins themselves 
discontinued their ridicule of the " Aoh yes " sort, and 
jokes about '* mon Anglais " and " les Angleesh " were 
dropped in the music-halls, which during the war in 
South Africa re-echoed with anti- English songs and 
sentiments. 

The King came on Friday, May i, 1903, a memor- 
able date. We had, of course, a strong staff at the 
Telegraph office for the occasion. My colleagues 
and I were reinforced by Mr. Ellerthorpe and Mr. 
McHugh from the London staff, and Lord Burnham, 
who was then still Sir Edward Lawson, organised the 
service during the four days of the royal sojourn. 
One of the finest street scenes witnessed in Paris 
since the days of the third Napoleon was King 
Edward's drive from the station where he landed, 



268 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

down the avenue of the Champs Elysees, and around 
the Place de la Concorde towards the British 
Embassy. His Majesty was in Field Marshal's 
uniform, and his carriage, in which President Loubet 
also sat, was escorted around to the Embassy by 
some of the crack Cuirassier regiments of the French 
army. At the Embassy there was a crowd of cele- 
brities awaiting the royal arrival, among them being 
many French men and women of distinction who 
were personal friends of His Majesty, and whose 
houses he always visited when he was in Paris as Prince 
of Wales. For me it was an interesting contrast to 
compare the official coming of the King with his 
former visits. I had frequently seen him in Paris 
when he was Prince of Wales and walked about 
like an ordinary visitor. 



CHAPTER XIX 

King Edward in Paris — The King at the Hotel de Ville — Great 
popular and official reception — The King and Queen of 
Italy in Paris — Voices against the visit — Attacks on Victor 
Emmanuel and the Republicans who receive him — M. and 
Madame Jaures at the Elysee banquet — The Socialist 
citoyenne and her diamonds — The Republic and the 
Church at war — Real and pretended anti-clericals — Two 
famous actors, Delaunay and Got — Herman Merivale and 
John Hollingshead in Paris — John Clifford Millage of the 
Chronicle — Death of Princess Mathilde — Her literary and 
artistic receptions — Marinoni and the Petit Journal — The 
king of compositors — Death of M. Waldeck- Rousseau at 
Corbeil — His last cigarette — Resignation of his successor, 
M. Combes — Exultation of Catholics over the defeat of the 
petit pere — Gabriel Syveton's career — The Patrie Frangaise 
and its literary and artistic supporters — Syveton's ruin 
and death — Return of Paul Deroulede — His souvenirs. 

I HAVE seen the King, for instance, when he was 
Prince of Wales, walking in the Rue de la Paix 
and the Rue Royale, dressed like an ordinary 
gentleman in frock-coat and the rest. Here in May, 
1903, I beheld him in all his magnificence as a mighty 
monarch, receiving the acclamation of the French, 
saluting his welcomers in military fashion, and un- 
doubtedly looking every inch a king. There was 
no mistake about it. He acted his part well, and 
the French saw it. It was no longer the old, familiar 
*' Prince des Galles," the habitue of the Cafe Anglais, 

260 



270 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

the sportsman, the clubman — the boulevardier, in fact 
— but a powerful potentate who played up admirably 
to his role as the ruler of millions, and the great sove- 
reign whose voice is potent for peace or war. And 
after he went the French learned that he was the 
great peacemaker in Europe. Another interesting 
episode of the King's stay in Paris was his visit to 
the Hotel de Ville, that place of many conflicts 
between contending politicians, some of whom are 
of the most divergent parties — Moderates, Nationalists, 
Socialists, and Reds. His Majesty went there in his 
military uniform, after he had been at the Vincennes 
review. He won the hearts of all, even of men who 
had their lives long been blatant about the tyranny 
of emperors and kings. The King left by the Gare 
des Invalides on Monday, May 4, 1903. He was 
dressed that time in admiral's costume and looked 
just as impressive as he did on the day of his coming 
into Paris. I was quite close to him as he conversed 
in the most amiable manner with his friend President 
Loubet, and had an occasional word with the Cabinet 
Ministers. Two months after M. Loubet went to 
London, accompanied by M. Delcasse and by his son, 
M. Paul Loubet, who is a high official of the Bank of 
France, and the entente cordiale was consolidated. 

It was noticeable that while King Edward was in 
Paris not a single jarring or discordant note was heard. 
The newspapers which had formerly been most anti- 
English became suddenly suave and subdued in tone. 
The contending parties and factions were temporarily 
at peace, and Frenchmen of opposing political camps 
discontinued their wrangling. 

It was far different when the King and Queen 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 271 

of Italy came a few months after, and also when 
Alfonso of Spain visited President Loubet in May, 
1905. French Socialists and Communists were up 
in arms against the Italian Government for the 
massacres at Milan. They pointed out that the 
Italian prisons were not only full of Socialists, but 
that all those who professed Republican principles 
in that country were hunted down and persecuted 
without pity. It was even intended by the Comite 
Socialiste Interfederal of France to organise a mani- 
festation against King Victor Emmanuel, who was 
made responsible for what happened at Milan. The 
manifestation was discountenanced by the Italian 
Socialists, so it did not take place. On the other 
hand, the French Socialists of the Guesde and Vaillant 
school, ^Q parti Socialiste rivolutionnaire, as opposed 
to the parti Socialiste gouvernemental of M. Jaures, 
were furious with the Republicans and sham Socialists 
who were "truckling" to the King of Italy. M. 
Combes was bitterly denounced for having expelled 
hundreds of Italians, and for having kept in prison 
others of the same nationality, while young Victor 
Emmanuel and his consort were in Paris. M. Jaures 
was attacked for having dispensed for a time with 
the services of that venerable agitator Amilcare 
Cipriani, who wrote for the Petite Ripublique Socialiste. 
Then there were jibes over Madame Loubet pre- 
senting the ladies of her Court to their Italian 
Majesties, and jibes over M. Jaures himself, who 
was at the Elys^e banquet in honour of the King 
and Queen of Italy, sitting between the Duchess 
of Ascoli and the Countess Guicciardini, while his 
wife, la citoyenne Jaures, scintillating with diamonds, 



272 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

was between Count Falgari and Captain di Casalino 
e Pismenzo. And it is to be remembered that 
M. Jaures was never attacked for having •* truckled " 
to King Edward of England, nor for his presence 
at garden parties given by Sir Edmund and Lady 
Monson when they were at the British Embassy. The 
advanced Socialists, moreover, had no bone to pick 
with Dr. Brousse and the municipal councillors who 
who had welcomed King Edward so enthusiastically 
to the Hotel de Ville. 

The denunciations and attacks were renewed when 
the King of Spain came, and with fourfold venom 
and animosity. Dr. Brousse, who belongs to the 
'* Unified Socialist " party, and some of his colleagues 
at the Hotel de Ville were described as having 
gone on their knees to lick the varnished boots of 
Alfonso the Thirteenth, monarch of the "most back- 
ward and unprogressive nation in Europe," a 
ruler of fanatics and zealots, and " responsible for the 
most atrocious crimes." The attacks on the King 
of Spain culminated, as we all know, in the dynamite 
outrage in the Rue de Rohan, where President 
Loubet and Alfonso the Thirteenth narrowly escaped 
grievous injury, if not death, as they were driving to 
the Quai d'Orsay from the Opera. 

Shortly after King Edward's State visit to Paris 
several remarkable events occurred. The principal 
of these was the death of Pope Leo the Thir- 
teenth, which some of the French Catholics attributed 
to the doings of the Republican Government and 
especially to M. Combes. At all events, the 
French Catholics maintained that the Pontiff's death 
was hastened owing to the persecutions of the 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 273 

religious orders by the man who was called 
the "modern Diocletian." M. Combes, it seems 
enjoyed the bracketing of his name with that of 
the Roman Emperor who persecuted the early Chris- 
tians, and he is even said to have joked over it. The 
fact is that the so-called "anti-clericalism" in France 
is rather a big joke, and only some of its professors 
are genuine. Even M. Combes himself, as well as 
those ultra anti-clericals who are pretropkages, or 
priest-eaters, and who insist on calling the new 
Pontiff, Pius the Tenth, Sarto tont court, are difficult 
to understand. They have undoubtedly persecuted 
the Catholics, but they profess to -be doing their best 
for them. Many of them have friends amongst the 
clergy, and their wives, almost to a woman, still 
adhere to the Church. Some of the thoroughgoing 
Socialists hold that the whole campaign against the 
Church which has been continuing since 1871 is 
carried on for the purpose of eluding the task of 
social reforms. The real anti-clericals are among the 
Jews, the Protestants, and the Freemasons, and these 
do heartily hate the Church of Rome. With these 
strong haters are some ex-priests, such as M. Victor 
Charbonuel and M. Clauzel of the Petite Rdpublique 
Socialiste, who for some reason or other vie in venom 
against their former religion with the genuine anti- 
clericals among the Jews, Protestants, and Freemasons. 
Anomalies and contradictions are numerous among 
the anti-clericals who have been brought up as 
Catholics. I have already alluded to the case of 
M. Waldeck- Rousseau, the originator of the Associa- 
tions Law against the religious orders, and who at 
the same time was the friend of Pere Maumus the 

19 



274 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Dominican. His wife when ill was in the care of 
nuns. Madame Loubet was appalled by the action 
of the Government toward the Church, and said to 
her husband, '^ Emile, tu nous f eras excommunier,"' and 
after having received the dying benediction of Pope 
Leo the Thirteenth she contributed 15,000 francs to 
the " Denier de Saint Pierre,'' or Peter's Pence. M. 
Loubet himself has always been a Catholic " under the 
rose," and signed the decrees against the orders and 
for the suppression of the Public Worship Estimates 
with a heavy heart. Socialist critics have often made 
merry over the first communions of M. Loubet's 
youngest son and of the daughter of " Citizen " 
Jaures.. The latter is likewise " chaffed " periodically 
for having sent his daughter to be educated in a 
country convent, while her name was registered as a 
pupil in a lay educational establishment in Paris, and, 
above all, for having procured water from the river 
Jordan for the baptizing of his youngest children. M. 
Leon Bourgeois is another official anti-clerical who 
has sent his children to convents, and other men could 
also be mentioned, notably M. de Pressense, who 
wrote an enthusiastic life of Cardinal Manning, and 
who in public takes to priest-eating with a keen 
appetite. 

The death of Pope Leo the Thirteenth, which has 
led to this digression on French anti-clericals, was 
followed by that of Lord Salisbury, which also caused 
some discussion in France. Apart from his career 
as a great statesman, Lord Salisbury, was known as 
the owner of houses in France and as a lover of 
the French climate. His house, the Chalet Cecil at 
Le Puy, near, Dieppe, has been given up by the 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 275 

family. While they were there formerly the country 
people around had a good deal to say about them. 
Lord Salisbury was particularly liked for his simple 
habits and his unassuming appearance. An old 
Dieppe man once told me that the '' grand Seigneur 
Anglais y Lor Salsbiree " walked along the country 
roads for miles, looking for all the world like a 
Norman farmer. In the south, at Beaulieu, the 
famous English statesman was less sheltered from 
the public gaze than he was at Dieppe. Alexandre 
Dumas fits, who was a near neighbour of Lord 
Salisbury at Le Puy during the summer months, used 
to relate how the English peer ingratiated himself 
with him by professing a boyish interest in the novels 
of Dumas /^r«?. There was nothing that could please 
the younger Dumas better than to praise his father, 
for whom he had an unbounded veneration. It is 
doubtful if Lord Salisbury took a deep interest in the 
plays of Dumas fils, but he was at least a reader of 
the stories spun by the father and those who worked 
with him in turning out fascinating, romantic tales 
which still allure both the young, who are not critical, 
and those of the old who have acquired no taste for 
the newer fiction. 

Reference to Dumas y^/i' and his father reminds me 
that another remarkable man whom I knew in his 
retirement died in this year. Louis Arsene Delaunay, 
the finest jeune premier ever possessed by the 
Comedie Fran^aise, died at Versailles in September, 
1903. He was the grandest romantic actor whom 
I have seen. He retired from the Comedie Fran9aise 
in 1887, having passed the limit of age. He was 
over seventy then, but in the " Don Juan" of Dumas 



276 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

pere, or as a hero in any of Casimir Delavigne's plays, 
he looked to the last almost as young and as blooming 
as when he left the Conservatoire. My old friend 
Herman Merivale was an intense admirer of De- 
launay, and when I last saw him in Paris, in 1902, he 
almost wept when he heard that the famous old actor 
was breaking down in health. Merivale at the time 
had given up going to the theatre, but the mention 
of Delaunay's name reminded him of his youth and 
of the deep interest in the French stage and French 
literature which he took in his Oxford days and long 
after. Much as he adored the Comedie Fran9aise, 
he never went near it during his last visit to Paris. 

He stayed, on my recommendation, while he was 
paying this last visit to Paris, at the Marlboro, near 
the Opera, and there he and Mrs. Merivale met their 
old friend John HoUingshead of ** Sacred Lamp " 
fame. HoUingshead was then still full of fun, and 
I recollect that as he, Mr. and Mrs. Merivale, and I 
were having tea at the Elysee Palace Hotel in the 
Champs Elysees one afternoon he made a grim joke. 
A Tzigane band was playing rather discordantly 
during the fashionable " five o'clock tea " and Meri- 
vale objected to the discord. " What will you do," 
said HoUingshead, with his queer old smile, "when 
you have to listen all day long to the music of the 
spheres ? " We all laughed at the sally, and I little 
thought at the time that both Merivale and HoUings- 
head were so near the end of their days. John 
HoUingshead reminded me always distantly of 
Delaunay the actor, whom he resembled a little. 
Also a favourite with Merivale was Edmond Got of 
the Theatre Frangais, who died about two years 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 277 

before Delaunay. Got was another incomparable 
comedian whose place has not been filled. He won 
his triumphs as "Triboulet" as the Alsatian Rabbi 
in Erckmann-Chatrian's "Ami Fritz," " Poirier," 
" Mascarille," and above all as " Giboyer " in Emile 
Augier's two plays in which the dramatist was 
accused of caricaturing Louis Veuillot, the celebrated 
Catholic journalist. John Hollingshead, above referred 
to, had Got and the others of the Comedie Fran9aise 
at the Gaiety in London in 1879. Got complained 
at that time of the preponderance of Sarah Bernhardt 
who was the person whom the British playgoers 
particularly wanted to see and of whom, in Got's own 
words, they made an idol. 

I must also call to mind here another man who 
disappeared for ever in 1903. This was John Clifford 
Millage, who had long been Paris Correspondent of 
the Daily Chronicle. He died at Bournemouth in 
August, 1903, nearly on the first anniversary of the 
death of Sir Campbell Clarke, and about seven 
months after M. de Blowitz had gone. These deaths 
of Paris Correspondents followed in strangely quick 
succession. First Bowes went, and then the others, 
who included several men representing weekly papers, 
as well as the better known Correspondents. The 
fatal scythe swept off about ten English pressmen 
in a comparatively short space of time, and all died 
more or less suddenly. At any rate, none of them 
were long ill before they passed away. Millage was 
a very able man, although he had attained no dis- 
tinction beyond that of the ordinary journalist, who 
wrote always in an interesting and sometimes in a 
brilliant way. I have seen work by Millage which 



278 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

was rare, unique, but this had nothing to do with 
his daily correspondence. He was an undoubted 
authority on questions connected with the Church 
of Rome, of which he was a zealous member. In 
early youth he studied as an ecclesiastical neophyte 
in colleges in England and also in Rome itself. 
Abandoning the ecclesiastical state before reaching 
priestly orders, he took to journalism, and was also 
for a time manager of a theatre. Throughout his 
long career as a Paris Correspondent Millage num- 
bered among his friends Cardinal Richard, Cardinal 
Manning, Cardinal Vaughan, and many English 
prelates. He was also closely connected at one 
time with Monsignor Capel, whose work in London 
will be remembered by many, and whose gifts as 
a fashionable preacher have been admitted by such 
an authority as Mr. W. D. Howells, the American 
novelist, who once heard him addressing an aristo- 
cratic gathering of English-speaking visitors to 
Florence. Millage took a very active part in the 
Dreyfus case, and was one of the most ardent 
champions of the wrongly -convicted officer, who 
was, when he returned to his family, presented by 
the Correspondent of the Chronicle with a sword 
on the part of the proprietors of that paper. 

In 1904 many more people of note, some of whom 
I had known, died in Paris. Princess Mathilda 
Bonaparte, who had long been separated from her 
husband, Prince Demidoff, died in January, 1904, 
genuinely regretted by the numerous literary and 
artistic friends whom she used to gather around her 
in her summer residence at Saint Gratien, outside 
Paris, or in her town residence in the Rue de Berri 




0^ 




Rischgttz"] 



Princess Mathilde. 



\Colhction 



To face p. -m. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 279 

Her death brought to Paris for some weeks her 
nephew, General Prince Napoleon of the Russian 
Army, and her sister-in-law. Princess Clotilde of 
Savoy, widow of Prince Jerome Napoleon. There 
also passed away at this time Marinoni, who success- 
fully developed the Petit Journal, and the painter and 
sculptor Gerome. Marinoni was a man who had 
risen from nothing, and who died proprietor of a 
most prosperous newspaper. He was in early life 
a cowherd, became apprenticed to the printing trade 
in Paris, invented the Marinoni press, and reorganised 
the one-sou daily, which, in spite of numerous rivals, 
holds its own to this day. The Petit Journal enriched 
Marinoni without leading him to any high office in 
the State. He conducted it on absolutely correct 
lines, so that it could be read by schoolgirls. It used 
to be regarded at one time as the favourite paper of 
the concierges of Paris and the provinces, but the 
middle-class people read it as well. One of its 
principal writers for years was Francisque Sarcey, 
dramatic critic of the Temps, and who also wrote 
social articles for half a dozen newspapers. He was 
regarded as the apostle of common sense, the man 
who wrote exactly as the bourgeois people wanted. 
He made a mistake, however, when he penned for 
the Petit Journal an article which Marinoni deemed 
objectionable, and he had to leave the paper. Another 
able writer for the Petit Journal in Marinoni's time 
was Ernest Judet, a Nationalist and strong anti- 
Drey fusard, who raked up the scandal about Zola's 
father at the time when all France was in a state 
of agitation over Captain Dreyfus. 

Marinoni, it must be remembered, did not found 



280 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

the Petit Journal, but, as I said, he developed and 
reorganised it. The paper, which was the first 
journal a tin S021, was started in 1863 by Moses 
Millaud, a business man, who made a large fortune 
but lost it before he died. He was assisted by his 
son Albert Millaud, afterwards a dramatist of the 
lighter order, a chronicler of the Figaro, and the 
quasi-husband of Madame Judic. Millaud junior 
used to distribute the Petit Journal in the provinces 
after its foundation. The initial success of the little 
paper was due to L^o Lespes, who, over the once 
well-known signature of Timoth^e Trim, wrote a 
daily omniu^n-gatherum article, and to the sensa- 
tional story-spinner, Ponson du Terrail, author of 
Rocambole's stirring adventures. The Millauds one 
day got rid of the big and burly Lespes, as he 
was becoming too unmanageable, and their serial 
man, Ponson du Terrail, died at Bordeaux in 1871. 
The Petit Journal then declined, and passed into the 
hands of that famous journalist Emile de Girardin. 
Its revival was not effected by the new director, but 
by Marinoni, who took it over in the seventies, and 
it soon killed all its rivals except the Petit Parisien, 
which still flourishes. When Marinoni died, the paper 
was directed by his son-in-law, Desir6 Cassigneul, 
who passed away in December, 1906. His successor 
is M. Privet, Senator for the Seine-et-Marne depart- 
ment, who was Chairman of the Board of Directors 
of the prosperous halfpenny paper which has made 
the fortunes of several proprietors. 

The deaths to which I have been alluding attracted 
less public attention than that of M. Waldeck- Rousseau, 
whose busy life ended after a painful operation in his 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 281 

country house at Corbell, on August ii, 1904. 
France thus lost for ever one of her ablest men, and 
one who seemed destined for greater work than had 
been accomplished by any of his political colleagues 
and contemporaries. His end was pathetic, but not 
unworthy of the man. Before being operated upon, 
by a great German specialist, he called for a cigarette, 
remarking that it would probably be his last. He 
met his fate without flinching, and he knew that he 
was doomed long before he died. While slowly dying 
at Corbeil he lost interest in politics, both home and 
foreign. The great struggle between Russia and 
Japan which was raging at the time left him unmoved. 
As to what was happening in France under his suc- 
cessor, M. Combes, one of his last pronouncements 
before he became utterly feeble was that the Associa- 
tions Law, or Laws, with which he was identified, 
were not applied with proper discrimination. His 
words were : " II ne fallait pas transformer une loi 
de controle en loi d'exclusion." 

Five months after the death of M. Waldeck- 
Rousseau, his successor as head of the Cabinet, M. 
Combes — le petit pere as he was known even by 
some of his supporters, who complained that he had 
the Vatican on the brain — resigned, as he had only a 
small majority. Naturally there was great exultation 
in the camp of the Catholics over the downfall of the 
petit pere, who only a short time before his resignation 
seemed to be firm in the saddle. They attributed his 
overthrow to the charges brought against his son 
relative to the "tapping" of the Carthusians for 
money, and so forth. Anyhow, down he went, and 
returned, after an active term of office, to his cheres 



282 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Hudes, which are of the philosophical order. But the 
triumph of the Catholics was of brief duration, for 
the edicts of M. Combes were carried out by his 
successors ; and then came the greatest blow of all, 
the abolition of the " Concordat," or " Convention du 
26 Messidor An IX. entre le Gouvernement Fran^ais 
et sa Saintetd Pie VII.," and the separation of Church 
and State. 

The ever indispensable M. Maurice Rouvier, who 
had been Finance Minister in the Cabinet of 
M. Combes, became President of the Council on 
January 24, 1905. In the intervals of political 
happenings the Parisians derived a good deal of 
entertainment from the Syveton case and the esca- 
pade of the bank clerk Gallay. The Syveton case 
began by blows and ended in the asphyxiation of the 
principal character. Gabriel Syveton was what is 
known as an arriviste. He had been a schoolmaster 
or professor in a country college, married a Belgian 
widow who was as ambitious as himself, and both 
resolved to conquer Paris. After a good deal of 
trouble they managed to live in the capital ; Syveton 
joined the Nationalist party, wrote for the papers, 
composed political articles for Count Boni de 
Castellane — husband, now divorced, of Jay Gould's 
daughter — and by degrees succeeded in becoming a 
deputy and treasurer of the Patrie Francaise. He 
slapped General Andr^, War Minister, in the Chamber, 
and soon afterwards it came out that he was leading 
a disreputable life, that he was depraving his step- 
daughter, and squandering the funds of the Nationalists 
who had over-trusted him. And so he fell a victim 
to his ambition to conquer Paris. He was found one 




Jules LemaItre. 



To face p. 283. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

morning dead in his study, his face inhaling coal-gas 
near a stove. 

In England the case of Syveton, and that of the 
bank clerk Gallay, who led a double life, being a 
scribe at the Comptoir d'Escompte by day and an 
imitation millionaire at night with the aid of ;^30,ooo 
stolen from his employers, would only attract passing 
attention, and would be consigned to the back lanes 
of the newspapers. 

In Paris, on the other hand, such things are 
magnified beyond measure. We had the Syveton 
case and the Gallay escapade on the front pages of 
the daily newspapers for months, and every detail 
about the two men that could be raked up by pains- 
taking reporters with the instinct of detectives was 
published. 

One capital fact emerged from the Syveton case 
at least, for it had a connection with politics, whereas 
the Gallay affair belonged to the realm q{ fails divers. 
The revelations about Gabriel Syveton's home life 
gave a death-blow to the Nationalists, who at one 
time seemed destined to become powerful, and thus 
General Andr^, the Ministre gifl^, and his friends had 
consummate revenge. Syveton, Dausset, and some 
others had succeeded in enlisting for the Nationalist 
cause a whole crowd of literary men. They managed, 
after much difficulty, in drawing M. Jules Lemaitre, 
Academician and dramatist, into politics. I call to 
mind the great overflow meeting in the Agricultural 
Society's Hall, quite close to where I lived, of the 
would-be saviours of France, the men of the Patrie 
Frangaise or Nationalist League, one evening in 
January, 1899. I went to the meeting and saw 



284 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Jules Lemaitre in the chair, with Frangois Copp^e, 
another Academician, as honorary president. With 
them on the platform were Syveton and Dausset, 
the great organisers of the meeting, Maurice Barres 
the novelist, and half a dozen other literary men and 
women. All were full of enthusiasm, and after several 
speeches, resolutions were passed and a strong 
committee of active workers and propagandists was 
formed. The improvised politicians of the League 
included also artists as well as literary men. Jean 
B^raud, Raffaelli, Detaille, and even the magnificent 
Carolus Duran patronised the work of national salva- 
tion, and so, too, did the caricaturists Caran d'Ache 
and Forain. Madame Adam was heart and soul 
with M. Syveton and his colleagues, and so were 
the titled lady who signs sparkling society novelettes 
as "Gyp " and the indefatigable Madame Marie Anne 
de Bo vet. Mistral, the Proven9al poet, was with 
them, as well as Jean Maria de Heredia, the forger 
of flawless sonnets about Andalusia, the conquis- 
tadoreSy and the great Spanish sea-captains and 
discoverers. Even M. Ferdinand Brunetiere, the 
austere scholar and critic, was drawn into the 
Nationalist net, as well as Lemaitre, Paul Bourget, 
Henri Lavedan, Albert Sorel the historian, Ren^ 
Doumic, and many more of the ablest and most 
distinguished writers in prose and verse of modern 
France. Ruin came when Gabriel Syveton was 
exposed. It is true that Francois Copp^e and a few 
others of the literary and artistic group forming part 
of the Patrie Fran^aise Salvation League professed 
to believe in Syveton even after the exposure. They 
erected a monument to his memory in Montparnasse 




Photo} 



Paul DERouLfeDE. 



[Petit 



To face p. 285. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 285 

Cemetery, but their cause was doomed, and the 
Nationalists, last vestiges of the Boulangists, received 
their quietus. The literary men and the artists 
returned to their ordinary work, M. Jules Lemaitre 
at their head, and most of them vowed to have 
nothing more to do with politics. 

The Nationalists were so beaten after the affaire 
Syveton that they had not energy enough left to 
give a welcome home to the exile, Paul Deroulede, 
another poet, but of the lesser order, who was allowed 
to return to France in December, 1905. He reached 
home quietly, without any of the demonstrations such 
as were organised in honour of Henri Rochefort when 
he came back from Portland Place. Deroulede owed 
his return to King Alfonso of Spain and the Queen- 
mother, who used to patronise him when he was in 
exile at San Sebastian. They interceded for him 
when M. Loubet went to Madrid to return the visit 
paid by King Alfonso the Thirteenth to Paris in 
May, 1905. M. Deroulede, having entered Paris 
without any reception, went to live the simple life 
in the villa near Paris left to him by his uncle, 
Emile Augier, the dramatist. 

This simple life he seems at present determined 
to lead after a stormy political career. I have no 
means of knowing the extent of M. Deroulede's 
private fortune, but, in common with most French 
political men, he is well provided with funds. He 
had a considerable fortune of his own, which he shared 
with his sister, who acted as his housekeeper, and he 
was also left a legacy by his celebrated uncle. The 
latter is much despised as a dramatist in these days, 
when M, Paul Hervieu, M. Maurice Donnay, 



286 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

M. Alfred Capus, M. Romain Coolus, M. Henri 
Lavedan, M. Henry Bernstein, and the ideologue, 
M. Brieux, fill the playbills and rivet the attention 
of the intellectual world. Anyhow, Augier was a 
great man in his day, and his ** Effrontes," his ** Fils 
de Giboyer," and three or four other plays caused 
as much discussion twenty-five and thirty years back 
as do any of the dramatic productions of the moderns. 
Moreover, he made money by the stage, and was able 
to retire before the managers, the critics, or the public 
could say that he had written himself out. Augier 
gave up writing for the stage after a meeting with 
Scribe at a theatrical manager's office. While the 
once prolific and popular Scribe was waiting to see 
the manager, the latter was overheard by Augier 
saying to his secretary: ''Que veut-il ce vieux birbe'' 
("this old buffer"). Augier was struck by this, and 
saw Scribe so crestfallen after an interview with the 
manager that he wrote very little for the theatres, and 
retired to the villa near Bougival which now belongs 
to his nephew the patriot politician, Deroulede. The 
latter has since his return home written a volume of 
souvenirs entitled "1870." In this he shows how, 
when he went to offer his services in the war against 
Germany, he was upbraided by an officer, an old 
friend of his, as being one of the Republicans who 
had, before the campaign, insulted the Imperial army 
and tried to sap the allegiance of soldiers to their 
superiors. Deroulede, it seems, had before the war 
described the profession of arms as un metier de 
brute. This did not prevent him from facing the 
Germans in 1870 with the courage of a true patriot, 
and there were very few of the Republicans who 
imitated his example in this respect. 



CHAPTER XX 

The Church and State conflict — Both sides of the question — 
M. Viviani's speech and Professor Huxley on Christian 
mythology — M. Camille Pelletan and the Pope — Hatred of 
the Vatican in France and England— The Harlot of the 
Seven Hills — War against Rome begun in 1882 — What the 
Catholics complain of — Religion and politics. 

THE great conflict between Church and State in 
France, or rather between France and the 
Vatican, reached an acute stage during my closing 
years in Paris. It was just before the return of Paul 
Deroulede from exile, noticed in the preceding 
chapter, that the Concordat was abolished and the 
separation of Church and State effected. This was 
followed by the feeble struggles of the Catholics 
against the taking of official inventories of church 
treasures and furniture ; by the Papal letters, first 
against the ""^ associations cultziellesj" and next 
against acceptance of the law of 1881, which would 
assimilate meetings for public worship to ordinary 
assemblies dissolvable at any moment by the police ; 
and by the expulsion of Mgr. - Montagnini, the 
Papal agent, formerly "auditor" of the Legate, who 
had remained in Paris in charge of the nunciature 
long after diplomatic relations ceased between France 
and the Vatican. 

287 



288 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

This conflict, which I have been watching during 
my long years of residence in Paris, wondering how it 
would end, is only another case of history repeating 
itself. The Church of Rome, in England, Germany, 
and elsewhere besides France, has had many desperate 
struggles to maintain the supremacy which she has 
insisted upon as her right since the days of Pope 
Gregory the Seventh, the famous Hildebrand, and of 
Boniface the Eighth, in the fourteenth century. Pius 
the Tenth has only imitated his predecessors in 
fulminating his encyclicals Vehementer Nos, in which 
he promised to give his instructions to the French 
prelates, and his Gravissimo officii, in which he re- 
fused to authorise the ^^associations cultuellesr ^ The 
Quanta Cura and the Syllabus of Pius the Ninth were 
equally assertive as to the supremacy of Church over 
State. Pius the Tenth and his advisers have carried 
on the old traditions, and will not have Erastianism in 
any shape or form. He is God's Vicar, the represen- 
tative of Catholic unity, and rules the Church, which 
must not be subservient to man. He is the chief 
of those who were once described by the late 
Cardinal Meignan, Archbishop of Tours, as "admir- 
ables vieillards qui m'ont semble etre les gardiens 
d'un precieux tresor. lis sont pench^s autour de ce 
depot de verity que les siecles leur ont porte, et Ton 
admire le zele avec lequel ils restent les sentinelles de 

^ In the later encyclical issued in January, 1907, Pope Pius the 
Tenth, while answering his numerous and implacable enemies, is 
strongly assertive of the " spiritual " rights of the Church of which 
he is head. He declared that he had had no intention of 
humbling the civil power, nor of opposing any form of govern- 
ment, but of " safeguarding the intangible work of our Lord and 
Master Jesus Christ." 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 289 

la tradition." ^ It is the uncompromising attitude of 
the Vatican that has impelled many French statesmen 
to oppose the Pope and to act as if they wanted 
to banish Catholicism from the country altogether. 
There are other and deeper reasons also for the 
hostility to Rome. Voltaire and the Encyclopsedists, 
the diffusion of German philosophy in France, 
the books of Haeckel, the free criticism of the 
Bible, the lapsing or defections of priests and even 
bishops, the scandals among the clergy — few indeed, 
but very serious — all these causes have combined to 
sap whatever faith was left among Frenchmen. Then 
there was the other cause — the rigid morality insisted 
upon by the Church. The French who are brought 
up as Catholics are, as a writer once put it, pulled 
up by the Church at every turn. Considering the 
predominant part played by woman in France, it was 
a wonder that the Church had any hold whatever on 
Frenchmen. Many of them have revolted against 
this " pulling up," which is practised by priests with 
such success in Ireland, and even in England, where 
the rule of the Church is rigorous. The French who 
kicked against this rule have been glad to listen to 
such maxims as " Do absolutely what you like ; there 
is no God, no eternal punishment, nothing in the 
sky." This was practically what M. Viviani, a 
Minister in M. Clemenceau's Cabinet, declared in the 
Chamber of Deputies in November, 1906, in those 
sentences of "mixed metaphors" concerning which 
the Poet Laureate wrote to the Times. This is what 

^ It was Cardinal Meignan who was also said to have de- 
scribed the Roman Curia as the " commissariat de police de 
I'Eglise," but this has been denied. 

20 



290 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

M. Viviani said, and affickage, or posting all over 

the country, was voted for the pronouncement, which 

was based in all probability on M. Berthelot's 

discourse or lecture delivered some years back, in 

which he said : '* Le monde n'a plus de mystere," 

and on the dosfmatic utterances of the terrible 

Thanatist of Jena, who professed to solve the riddle 

of the universe, or rather to tell us that there was 

no riddle, no enigma about the world at all. " La 

troisieme Republique," said M. Viviani, "a appele 

autour d'elle les enfants du paysan, les enfants des 

ouvriers, et dans ces cerveaux obscurs, dans ces 

consciences entenebrees, elle a verse peu a peu le 

germe revolutionnaire de I'instruction, Cela n'a pas 

suffi. Tous ensemble, par nos peres, par nous-memes, 

nous nous sommes attache dans le passe a une ceuvre 

d'anticlericalisme, a une oeuvre d'irreligion. Nous 

avons arrache la conscience humaine a la croyance. 

Lorsqu'un miserable fatigu6 du poids du jour, ployait 

les genoux, nous I'avons releve, nous lui avons dit 

que derriere les nuages il n'y avait rien que des 

chimeres. Ensemble et dun geste magnifique nous 

avons eteint dans le ciel des lumieres qu'on ne 

rallumera pas." ^ 

^ Professor Huxley in one of his last review articles, con- 
tributed to the Nineteenth Century in July, 1890, is nearly 
but not quite so emphatic as M. Viviani. In a contribution 
relative to '' Lux Mundi and Science," he refers to the Bampton 
Lectures of 1859 and the new science of historical criticism, 
and concludes, after much bantering about old beliefs : " There 
really seems to be no reason why the next generation should 
not listen to a Bampton lecture modelled upon that addressed to 
the last, as : Time was — and that not very long ago — ^when all 
the relations of biblical authors concerning the old world were 
received with a ready belief ; and an unreasoning and uncritical 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 291 

And M. Viviani, Labour Minister in the Clemenceau 
Cabinet, who prides himself on having been one of 
the extinguishers of the hght of Heaven, is not half so 
blasphemous, from the Christian's point of view, as 
M. Camille Pelletan. I have had a great respect for 
years for Camille Pelletan as a writer and a debater. 
He is undoubtedly the clever son of a clever father, 
but he remains an obstinate priest-eater. He is one 
of the real anti-clericals, one who has not been 
brought up as a Catholic, and it was he who was at 
the back of M. Combes during the expulsions of the 
Orders, who, when he was Minister of Marine, 
deprived the sailors of their chaplains, and who has 
been finding that M. Clemenceau and M. Briand are 
not vigorous enough in their action against the hated 
Vatican. 

In an article written for the Matin in December, 
1906, M. Pelletan is not only jocosely blasphemous, 
but he shows, with M. Viviani, how the Republic is 
hostile to the Catholics. He heads his contribution 
" La Revoke de I'Eglise," and says : " Je n'etonnerai 
pas mes lecteurs, en disant que je n'ai jamais eu une 
foi bien vive dans la Providence. Mais j'avoue que 
ma vieille incredulity est depuis quelque temps fort 
ebranlee ; tant il semble Evident qu'elle a suscitee 
Pie X. dans I'interet de la grande oeuvre de laicisation 
que nous avions a accomplir. Timides et irresolus, 

faith accepted with equal satisfaction the narrative of the 
Captivity and the doings of Moses at the Court of Pharaoh, the 
account of the apostohc meeting in the Epistle to the Galatians, 
and of the fabrication of Eve. All that has been changed. . . . 
The mythology which embarrassed earnest Christians has vanished 
as an evil mist, the lifting of which has only more fully revealed 
the lineaments of infallible Truth." 



292 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

nous aurions trois fols manqu6 a notre mission, si 
le ciel n'avait veille sur nous, sous la forme de son 
representant authentique sur la terre. Ses voies 
[those of Providence] sont impenetrates. Remercions- 
le de ses bienfaits. Quand les republicains sont 
arrives au pouvoir, il y a plus de vingt ans, leur 
premier devoir aurait ete de d^chirer le pacte 
criminel conclu au lendemain de la Revolution [the 
Concordat] entre un Cesarisme corse et la theocratie 
romaine. Et pourtant les republicains n'osaient pas. 
II pr^tendait que la separation irriterait, souleverait 
la masse du pays. Les elections dernieres ont montre 
combien ce pretexte etait absurde. Combien de 
temps ces craintes ridicules nous auraient elles 
paralyses si la Providence n'avait pas mis la tiare sur 
la tete du Cardinal Sarto ? Nul ne peut savoir. Mais 
Pie X. parait ; ses pretentions rendent le Concordat 
impracticable. Graces lui en soient rendus. Et si 
vraiment le ciel nous I'a envoy^, graces en soient 
rendus au ciel ! " So M. Camille Pelletan rambles on, 
and after some more gibes at Providence, at the 
Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation and at the 
Pope, he says that much more must be done, and that 
is to abolish all the advantages and all the privileges 
hitherto showered on the Church. Rebels must not 
be fed, housed, and paid by the State. 

M. Clemenceau and M. Briand have also been 
accused by Catholics of having in former speeches 
shown hostility to the Church, but they have denied 
the statements attributed to them. Any one, how- 
ever, who knows anything about these two politicians 
can testify that they have both, notably M. Clemen- 
ceau, uttered and written many gibes and jeers, not 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 293 

only against the Church of Rome, but against old 
beliefs clung to by Protestants. They and other men 
of the " Bloc " resemble Favon, the dictator of Geneva, 
of whom it is written : " Tout homme professant une 
croyance religieuse ^tait aisement pour lui un sombre 
momier [mummer] si Protestant, un d^vot stupide si 
Catholique." And the persons who continued to teach 
and to preach religion for money Favon regarded as 
sceptical Pharisees " pontificating " and " mumming " 
for regular salaries. That there were no good men 
in the Churches — that they were all hypocrites — was 
his belief. 

Now, the Guardian of December 12, 1906, com- 
menting on the conflict between Rome and Paris, 
says : " We have very little respect for most of the 
motives which underlay the Separation Law, or for 
the state of mind of some of the members of the 
French Government, as M. Viviani, for instance. 
Such persons are the enemies, not of Rome, but of 
reliorion. But we do understand the weariness of 
France with the constant meddling of the Vatican in 
her domestic affairs." Just so. The Vatican is the 
great enemy of many English Churchmen and laymen, 
as well as of French Republicans, and any stick is 
good for it. The cry everywhere is, " Down with 
Rome ! " On reaching England after years of absence 
I find nothing changed in the attitude of many 
Protestants and Nonconformists towards this terrible 
Rome. In France I had seen the anti-Romans pass 
from words to acts. I saw Catholics, after abuse had 
been showered on them for years by the Lanterne 
and other newspapers, struck, stabbed, and hustled by 
police. I saw their priests and nuns hunted from 



294 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

their homes, and hissed in the streets by the vilest 
scum of humanity. 

In England there were only words against Rome. 
The Catholics assembled at Brighton in September, 
1906, and denounced the proceedings of the French 
Government. Afterwards there is a meeting of sound 
Protestants who have an ex-priest of Rome amongst 
them. This gentleman does not say much against 
Rome itself, but he has a bone to pick or an axe to 
grind with Archbishop Bourne. He is followed, how- 
ever, by a councillor who talks of the time coming 
when the " harlot from the seven hills should be struck 
from her bloodstained throne." ^ Then the secretary 
of the meeting referred to the monastic refugees from 
France as " undesirable aliens." And the liberal- 
minded and accommodating Mayor of Brighton was 
fustigated fiercely for having lent the Dome to the 
sons of the harlot. 

And I read, when still in Paris, Mr. Massingham*s 
letter to the Daily News in which he spoke of the 
" crowning folly of Ultramontanism which threatens 
every State with disruption, and in France at least, it, 
or the least prudent of its disciples, has for half a 
century nursed or actively promoted civil rebellion.'* 
And Mr. Robert Dell, the most extraordinary of 
English or Irish Catholics, wrote in the Morning 
Leader in September, 1906 "of the complete religious 
liberty offered by the Republic to French Catholics," 
which the Pope forbids them to accept. And I also 
find an Bdinb2i7^gk reviewer in October, 1904, quoting 
an " acute observer " who, early in the present 
Pontificate, said : " Who would have thought that 
^ See Sussex Daily News^ October 2, 1906. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 295 

we should so soon have had occasion to regret 
Leo. the Thirteenth ? " 

The reviewer then tries to show how Royalists 
who were Catholics conspired against the Republic, 
and says that "nine-tenths of what passes as anti- 
clericalism is hatred, not of religion, but of the 
interference of a mischievous and meddlesome 
priesthood in public and private life." Thus the 
war against the priests and the Vatican goes on in 
words in one place and in action in another. I cannot 
pretend to judge between the contending parties, but 
my experience in France showed me that the repre- 
sentatives of the Vatican never did more there than 
to assert their traditional prerogatives in spiritual 
matters. I What Royalist and Imperialist Catholics 
do in France is another thing. It has not even 
been clearly, definitely established that Pere Dulac 
or any of the French Jesuits pulled strings in the 
Dreyfus case. Catholics of the Royalist party have, 
of course, been vigorously opposed to the Republic. 
Their writers have been outspoken and acrimonious. 
M. Maurice Talmeyr, for instance, only to quote 
one, declared at the outset of the Church war that 

^ And even M. Combes, in his contribution to the New Free 
Press, in January, 1907, admitted that the present Pope was 
not acting through obstinacy or worldly motives in his opposi- 
tion to the French Government, but through consciousness 
of the duties of his office, and in order to defend the funda- 
mental doctrine of the Church. The admission of M. Combes 
was of course qualified by his expression of doubt as to the 
intelligence of the Pope. M. Combes is ex officio bound to 
believe that people acting mainly through religious motives 
are either lacking in intelligence, or slaves of sentiment and 
emotion. 



296 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

the Republicans, Michelet at their head, falsified 
everything ; that, contrary to their showing, peasants 
were not so badly situated under the ancien regime. 
M. Talmeyr concluded : " La R6publique a vecu, et 
vit encore de mensonge. Elle a litterament mysti- 
fi6 des generations, elle a eu des imposteurs de 
genie, des bonnimenteurs [patterers] e'blouissants, et 
son veritable pere n'a meme et6 ni Voltaire, ni 
Diderot, ni Rousseau, mais bien plutot Cagliostro. 
Elle mourra peut-etre un jour, de la simple verity." 
These are the words of an uncompromising Monar- 
chist Catholic, but there are Catholic Republicans 
who, while attached to their favourite form of govern- 
ment, condemn the blind hostility to Rome as well as 
the Royalists. One of these writers very ably tried to 
show in the Nationalist Eclair in September, 1906, 
that the statement that the Pope was a provocateur 
was an arrant falsehood. The destruction of Catholi- 
cism, he urged, was what the Freemasons holding 
power wanted, and nothing short of that. They were 
trying to bring it about by the progressive " ablation " 
of the fibrous network knitting France and Rome. 
They could not revive Gallicanism, which is dead and 
buried, so they tried to provoke the Pope in order to 
damage him in the eyes of French Catholics and of 
the world. The Pope was not the elected agent 
of the Triplice, for he was a Venetian, and against 
Austria. The writer then recalls the pettifogging 
proceedings of M. Combes over the nomination of 
bishops, the visit of M. Loubet to the Quirinal, the 
Vatican being overlooked, the quarrels about the cases 
of the Bishops of Laval and Dijon, the secret docu- 
ment received by M. Jaures from Monaco, and other 




Photo'] 



Ferdinand Brunetiere. 



\_Gcyschcl 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 297 

affairs which are all attributed by the Papal apologist 
to the masonic elaborators of the plan leading up 
to the Separation Law. He concludes : " Mais la 
mauvaise foi est lame de la politique ma9onnique. 
Comme dans I'affaire des nominations episcopales, 
comma dans celle du voyage a Rome, on cherche a 
cr^er la legende du Pape provocateur. Les 
Catholiques ne le permettront pas, c'est entendu ; mais 
les honnetes gens et les bons fran9ais, tous ceux qui 
aiment la verity, ne se laisseront pas d'avantage 
entamer." 

If it be quite true that the upper classes in France 
and many of the higher clergy have always been in 
favour of a monarchical restoration, there were on the 
other hand numerous French priests and laymen who 
rallied to the Republic even before Leo the Thirteenth 
enjoined them to do so. That Pope wanted to keep 
in with France, in spite of the enormous difficulties 
placed in his way by hostile Ministries. He believed 
with M. Brunetiere that France meant Catholicism all 
the world over, so he did his best to bring about 
the ralliement, and to reconcile the different Catholic 
parties to the Republic. Pius the Tenth is denounced 
as no statesman, forsooth, because he has not seen 
this. But what, it may be asked, did his statesmanlike 
predecessor get for his pains ? Absolutely nothing. 
He did not — he was not able to — stop the oncoming 
storm. It is possible that he might have done so had 
some of the founders of the Third Republic, such as 
Gambetta, been alive. 

It was Gambetta who, in those letters ^ to the lady 

^ These letters were published in the Revue de Paris, in 
December, 1906. 



298 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

whom he so admired, although she was by no means a 
great beauty, Madame L^oni L^on, letters which are 
no doubt genuine, wrote of the possibility of a mariage 
du raison between the French Government and Rome 
on the accession of "cet d^gant et raffing Cardinal 
Pecci." 

But Gambetta's successors, M. Combes, M. 
Clemenceau, and the rest, have no desire for such 
a union. They have carried out their programme to 
the end, far distancing the acts of Jules Ferry in 
1882. 

In Ferry's time, it will be remembered, the war 
against Rome began, but it was only waged languidly 
afterwards, and Jesuits and others who were expelled 
returned. Ferry began by secularising schools. The 
name of God was not to be mentioned in educational 
establishments, and crucifixes and religious pictures 
were removed from such places. It was also decreed 
that crucifixes were to be removed from the Courts of 
Justice, but Bonnat's great picture of Christ on the 
Cross remained in the Paris Hall of Assize. Divorce, 
against which Rome has always set its face, was made 
legal, as well as burial with civil rites. Crosses were 
taken off the gates of cemeteries, military observance 
of Sunday was done away with, and chaplains were 
no longer to be paid in Government establishments. 
Some years after, the cry of " Knapsacks for the 
priests," or les curds sac au dos, was heard, and 
the Government no longer exempted ecclesiastical 
students from army service. Then the Catholics 
received another buffet when the Pantheon, which 
had been a church, was secularised for the interment 
of Victor Hugo. Some years subsequently, the Arch- 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 299 

bishop of Aix, Mgr. Gonthe-Soulard, was prosecuted 
in Paris for having protested against a circular issued 
by M. Fallieres, then Minister of PubHc Worship, and 
deemed vexatious by the prelate. The Government, 
furthermore, insisted, according to the Catholic con- 
tention, on undue interference between the clergy 
and the churchwardens. Under the pacific regime of 
M. Meline the Catholics obtained a respite, and all 
went well until the Dreyfus agitation, supposed to be 
fomented by the Catholics in the army who were 
imbued with the Jesuitical spirit. M. Waldeck- 
Rousseau's Association Law was sprung now, and 
carried into energetic effect by his successor, M. 
Combes, who during his tenure also buffeted the 
Catholics by unveiling a statue to Ernest Renan in 
that writer's native place in Brittany. 

And it was also M. Combes who no doubt inspired 
the discourteous action of M. Loubet in overlooking 
the Pope when he went to Rome. It was no wonder 
that a French prelate said about this time that what 
pained him most in the religious crisis was to see how 
little Catholics counted. They were reviled, insulted, 
and robbed in France, but nobody seemed to mind. 

I could never fathom the motives underlying the 
unexampled animosity of M. Emile Combes towards 
the Church which educated him and nearly reckoned 
him among its ministers. I have seen many priests 
and ecclesiastical students who broke away from the 
Church of Rome, but I have never found them to 
be unrelenting enemies of their old creed. I can 
only vaguely surmise that M. Combes, when a 
budding ecclesiastic, must have had a grievance against 
a superior, or superiors. Luther, as we all know, had 



300 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

a grievance against an opposition monk, of whom he 
said: "God willing, I will beat a hole in his drum." He 
also had a grievance against Cardinal Cajetan, who 
tried to lecture him back to obedience. M. Combes 
may have had some similar reasons for trying to 
beat a hole in the Papal drum, and he has certainly 
taken a diabolical revenge on his former co- 
religionists. Homais himself, the fearful apothecary 
in Flaubert's " Madame Bovary," could not have 
waged such a war against true believers had he 
been invested with supreme authority over gen- 
darmes, policemen, and troops of the line. One 
must also vaguely suppose that M. Combes wanted 
to show his party how zealous in their cause and 
how energetic he could be. M. Loubet, who 
induced him to leave his cheres etudes for active 
politics and a seat in the Cabinet, must have some- 
times regretted having recourse to the "■ petit pere." 

The Associations Law, first applied in 1901, was 
directed against " non- authorised " Orders which had 
not received State sanction. These were declared 
to be illegal, but the Comte de Mun and his co- 
religionists maintained the contrary. The non- 
authorised religious societies were then allowed three 
months wherein to apply for authorisation. The 
applications were to be accompanied by statements 
as regards property possessed, rules, and lists of 
members. Some of the Orders, such as the Sulpi- 
cians and the Vincentians or Lazarists, complied 
with the regulations, but the Jesuits, the Franciscans, 
the Oblates, the Assumptionists and several other 
communities mistrusted the Government and broke 
up or went to England, the United States, Italy, 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 301 

Spain, Belgium, and Holland. Their houses and 
property left behind were promptly seized by the 
Government. M. Waldeck- Rousseau, who had framed 
the Associations Law, now retired, and was followed 
by M. Combes, who applied the law with so much 
vigour, that M. Waldeck- Rousseau, as I have shown 
in a previous chapter, expostulated with the new 
Cabinet shortly before his death. M. Combes began 
by refusing any authorisation even to those who 
had applied for it, and expulsions were effected all 
over France. Friends of the Government, and who 
also pretended to be friends of the Catholics, tried 
to make the latter believe at this time that the Combes 
Cabinet was doing a good thing in expelling the 
Orders. There were even Catholics who held that 
the expulsions would benefit the secular clergy, who 
had long suffered from the competition and the 
domination of the Orders, the members whereof are 
usually effective and ornamental preachers, more or 
less brilliant scholars, and great favourites with the 
families of the aristocracy and of the opulent 
bourgeoisie. What has happened since the expulsions 
shows that the secular clergy and the Catholic 
religion itself have little to expect from the men who 
hold the power in France.^ It is no wonder there- 

^ The situation was best summed up by the resignation of 
M. SolHers, juge <X instruction at Tarascon in the South for 
thirty-four years. He resigned his office in December, 1906. 
M. SolHers wrote to the Minister of Justice stating as follows : 
" Having tried and convicted thieves and vagabonds for thirty- 
six years, I cannot now convict the most honest and upright 
men in the country." Other French judges, magistrates, lawyers, 
police officials, and military men had not the same scruples in 
carrying out laws which were unnecessary. 



302 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

fore that the Guardian should express " little respect 
for the motives which underlay the Separation Law.'' 
We have now to see how the French Catholics 
and their clergy will extricate themselves from the 
serious complications brought about, some say, by 
Pope Pius the Tenth, Cardinal Merry del Val, and 
Jesuit advisers, and others by the determined hostility 
of the French political men, such as M. Clemenceau, 
M. Briand, M. Camille Pelletan, M. Ranc, and M. 
Combes, only to mention the leaders among those 
who seem bent upon the destruction of the Catholic 
and all other forms of Christianity in France. 
According to the old saying, "it is not safe to 
prophesy," but judging from the objurgations of 
the most advanced anti-clericals, such as M. Camille 
Pelletan, it is certain that it will need a very strong 
statesman to carry on war a outrance with the Vatican. 
Bismarck was worsted by the German Catholics, 
and if the Catholics of France, strongly backed by 
Rome, as they are bound to be, only imitate Dr. 
Windhorst and his party, even M. Clemenceau may 
have eventually to go to Canossa, a place which must 
inevitably be mentioned in connection with conflicts 
such as that now proceeding in France. 

Apart from the Canossa side of the question, there 
is that of the possible revanche of French Catholics 
who have seen their religion reviled and persecuted 
ever since the foundation of the Third Republic. 
French anti-clericals may find that by coercion and 
harassing, if the word " persecution " be deemed too 
strong, they will cause the worms to turn. The more 
they try to annoy and to worry them, the more 
Ultramontane may become the Catholics. In Ireland, 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 303 

long ago, the Penal Laws did not kill Catholicism, 
but made it more popular and more powerful among 
the Irish, who refused to have the religion of the 
conqueror thrust down their throats by bayonets. 
Already in France, as was pointed out in the Times 
Paris correspondence of December 19, 1906, the 
whole question of Church and State begins to 
assume a more political character than before the 
separation. 



CHAPTER XXI 

The speculations as to a schism — Ultramontanism versus 
Gallicanism — The inside troubles of the Church in France 
— The cases of the bishops of Laval and Dijon — The effects 
of the Higher Criticism — Abbe Loisy's work — Ernest Renan, 
Hyacinthe Loyson and Alfred Loisy — Attacks on Abbe 
Loisy's teaching — His views on the Old Testament — His 
" L'Evangile et I'EgHse." 

AS to a general schism in France, which was sup- 
posed to be the object in view of M. Combes, 
and which at one time seemed near, owing to the 
activity of the Loisy school of biblical critics, it has 
not taken place. Neither has there been any dis- 
position towards a return to the Galilean propositions 
of 1682, which set forth, among other things, that a 
General Council of the Church was above the Pope, 
and that the decrees of the Pontiff were only decisive 
and immutable when they had the assent of the Church. 
The spirit of obedience towards Pius the Tenth mani- 
fested recently by the French prelates shows that they 
have become thoroughly Ultramontane, and that the 
Galilean traditions have been discarded by the higher 
clergy in France. 

Allusion to Gallicanism brings me to the subject of 
the conflict between the Church in France and some 
of her own children, the most notable of whom is 
Abb6 Alfred Loisy. Long before Abb^ Loisy's time 

304 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 305 

the Church was badly hit in France by Ernest Kenan's 
renunciation, and by the publication of his " Vie de 
Jesus." It was also hit by the falling away of Pere 
Hyacinthe. Abbe Loisy's influence was greater, 
however, than either that of Renan or of Pere 
Hyacinthe, and it is important to note that after the 
sensation caused by his criticism of the Bible, many 
French priests broke away from Rome, some of them 
becoming subsequently Protestant or Methodist 
evangelists, while others became laymen. It was 
about the time of the beginning of what has been 
termed " Loisyism " that we find Mgr. Geay, Bishop 
of Laval, and Mgr. Le Nordez, Bishop of Dijon, in 
sore trouble owing to certain acts of theirs. The 
Bishop of Laval was called to order by Rome because 
he was charged with being too assiduous in his atten- 
tion to the superioress of a Carmelite convent in his 
town. The Bishop of Dijon, on his side, was accused 
of fondness for the fine vintages of his district. 

Abbe Loisy was, and is still, held by many to have 
been more dangerous to the Church in France than, 
as I have said, either Renan or Pere Hyacinthe. 
Renan's "Vie de Jesus" chiefly appealed to those 
whose faith, if they ever had any, had been sapped 
by the reading of Voltaire. He wrote for the boule- 
vardiers of the more or less cultured sort, and 
presented to them a Christ who, in the words of Canon 
Liddon, recorded in his book the " Divinity of Our 
Lord," was " the semi-fabulous and somewhat im- 
moral hero of an Oriental story, fashioned to the taste 
of a modern Parisian public." By his studies on the 
** Origines de I'Eglise," and his " Histoire du Peuple 
d'Israel," Renan is considered to have done more to 

21 



306 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

disturb the Catholics in their faith than by the " Vie 
de J^sus." But, as I have said, he hit the Church 
badly, and so did Pere Hyacinthe, now M. Hyacinthe 
Loyson. 

I had never seen M. Loyson when he was a 
Carmelite and preached the Lenten sermons at Notre 
Dame, but I saw him first in 1882, or thereabouts, 
garbed like an English clergyman. He was lecturing 
to a large audience, comprising the Archbishop of 
Canterbury, who befriended him, and several Church 
of England people. I have often since seen M. 
Loyson in Paris with his wife, a tall American lady, 
and his son Paul, who has of late years been before 
the public as a dramatist, and who inherited ;^500 
from Dean Stanley. M. Loyson is an Orleans man, 
and left his father, a professor in the Academy of Pau, 
to study for the Church at the age of eighteen. He 
entered the little seminary of Saint Sulpice, and then 
the greater one, as Renan had done before him. He 
was a professor of theology at Avignon and at Nantes, 
joined the Carmelite order at Lyons after having been 
with the Dominicans for a time, and in 1865 was 
heard preaching at the Madeleine. He attracted 
immediate attention, and was compared to Lacordaire 
and Ravignan. He preached next at Notre Dame, 
and in 1866 began to be noticed unfavourably by 
Louis Veuillot, who smelt a heretic in a young friar 
too bold in his expressions and too liberal in his 
opinions. The crisis came in June, 1869, when Pere 
Hyacinthe declared at a public meeting of the Inter- 
national Peace League that Catholics, Protestants, 
and Jews could all come in harmony together with 
modern progress. His weightiest words were " II 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 307 

n'y a place au soleil du monde civilis6 que pour trois 
religions ; la Juive, la Catholique et la Protestante." 
" The Catholic religion in the middle — Christ between 
the two thieves," said an auditor, and soon after Pius 
the Ninth called the too daring friar to Rome. Mgr. 
Dupanloup, supposed to be the last of the Gallicans, 
did his best for Pere Hyacinthe, but reconciliation 
with Rome was not effected, and the recalcitrant friar 
left his order in September, 1869. From France he 
went to America, where he did not give satisfaction, 
as he declared that, although attacking the super- 
stitions patronised by the Vatican, he remained a 
Catholic. From America M. Loyson went to Munich 
to see the celebrated Canon von Dollinger of St. 
Cajetan's Church, who had also left Rome, and had 
founded the Old Catholics. M. Loyson was next 
in Rome, where he lectured in the Argentina Theatre, 
proclaiming, as he had done in Paris, the equal value 
of the three religions. To this he added denunciations 
of the Vatican, and advocated the marriage of priests. 
M. Loyson has not prospered in his new career, 
nor has he found many disciples. His quarrel with 
Rome has long been forgotten. 

Abb6 Loisy is a far different man to M. Loyson. 
He is no florid and theatrical pulpit orator, but plain 
in speech and style. He writes clearly, concisely, 
almost as the Sulpicians are trained to do. They 
discard rhetoric and verbal ornament, and evolve 
prose in which there is no straining after effect. I 
first saw Abbe Loisy in 1902 at the Ecole des Hautes 
Etudes of the Sorbonne. I went there to meet M. 
Pierre de Nolhac, of the Versailles Museum, author 
and lecturer in the school mentioned on Italian 



308 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

literature. I had to ask M. de Nolhac authorisation 
for an American professor and writer to use the 
illustrations in his book on " Petrarch at Avignon." 
M. de Nolhac gladly gave the required permission, 
but his publisher demurred, so my visit to the Ecole 
des Hautes Etudes was not successful. It enabled 
me, however, to see Abbe Loisy, who was also a 
professor at the school. I saw an ordinary, insignificant 
ecclesiastic, in whose appearance there was nothing 
remarkable, nothing to show the remarkable writer 
and scholar that Abbe Loisy undoubtedly is. 

Alfred Loisy was born at Ambrieres, in the Marne, 
in February, 1857, received the usual college education 
for the priesthood in the seminary at Chalons in his 
department, was ordained in June, 1879, and was for 
two years cure of Landricourt. From 1881 to 1893 
he was a professor at the Catholic Institute of Paris, 
and in great obscurity until 1892. In 1890 he pub- 
lished his Doctor's examination essay or thesis on the 
canon of the Old Testament, in the following year 
the history of the canon of the New Testament, in 
1892 a volume on Job, and then a critical history 
of the text and versions of the Old Testament. It 
was in 1892 that his review the Enseignement Biblique 
was published, and his programme of biblical teaching 
alarmed his superiors. Then his works which I have 
mentioned, and his " Mythes Chaldeens dela Creation 
et du Deluge," were carefully examined, and although 
he was still lecturing at the Catholic Institute, the 
Sulpicians forbade their students to go to hear him. 
In November, 1892, shortly after Ernest Renan's 
death. Abbe Loisy became bolder, or more explicit, 
and in his review stated that there were a certain 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 309 

number of conclusions on which criticism outside the 
limits of Catholicism could never retrace its steps, 
because there was good reason to show that they were 
permanent acquisitions of science. Of these were the 
statements that the Pentateuch in its present form was 
not the work of Moses ; that the first chapters of 
Genesis do not contain the true and accurate history 
of the origin of our race ; that the books of the 
Old Testament have not all the same historical 
character ; that all the historical books of the Old and 
the New Testaments were more freely written than is 
customary in modern historical works, and a certain 
freedom of interpretation is the legitimate consequence 
of the manner in which they were composed ; that 
there is a development of religious teaching in the 
Bible in all its elements — the idea of God, the idea of 
human destiny, and in the moral law ; that Biblical 
teaching as regards natural science does not rise 
above the level of the notions of antiquity, which 
notions have left their mark on biblical religious doc- 
trine ; and the Church with her dogmas follows upon 
the Gospel of Jesus but is not formally in the Gospel. 
What Abb^ Loisy wrote concerning the New 
Testament I deal with more fully later on. The 
statements just referred to were condemned by the 
'' Providentissimus Deus" encyclical of Pope Leo the 
Thirteenth, issued in 1893. It set forth that all the 
books recognised by the Church as sacred and canonical 
were written in all their parts under the inspiration 
of the Holy Spirit, and that the Divine inspiration 
in itself excluded error. 

After this encyclical Abb^ Loisy ceased the pub- 
lication of his review and became chaplain to the 



310 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

Dominican nuns at Neuilly, also acting as religious 
instructor of the convent boarders. While engaged 
here he diligently studied Cardinal Newman's writings, 
and returned to his favourite occupation of criticism, 
but in assumed names. He contributed to the Revue du 
Clergd Frangais, and other publications, articles signed 
" Isidore Despres," " Firmin," and " Jacques Simon." 
These contributions over fictitious names were soon 
condemned by Rome and by Cardinal Richard. When 
Professor Harnack's " Das Wesen des Christentums " 
was translated into French, Abbe Loisy replied with 
his celebrated " L'Evangile et I'Eglise," published by 
Picard in November, 1902. 

The storm raised by "L'Evangile et I'Eglise" was 
violent. All the orthodox ecclesiastics in France rose 
at M. Loisy. Here was another Renan, nay, another 
Voltaire, in the bosom of the Church, who risked 
eternal damnation for the sake of showing in print 
his cleverness and his scholarship. Pope Leo the 
Thirteenth, however, did not interfere, leaving the 
matter to Cardinal Richard and the Nuncio in Paris, 
Mgr. Lorenzelli. Cardinal Richard appointed six 
theologians to examine the book, and they condemned 
it. Only seven French prelates, however, endorsed 
the condemnation. The orthodox critics then opened 
fire, notably Abbe Gayraud, who threw off his robe 
as a Dominican friar to become a deputy in the 
Chamber, Father Prat, one of the exegetists on the 
Biblical Commission appointed by Pope Leo the Thir- 
teenth, Abb6 Fontaine, Abb6 Ch. Maignen, and many 
more. Even M. Ledrain, formerly a priest of the 
French Oratory, and now an official of the Louvre 
Museum and a writer, attacked M. Loisy, not, however. 




The Abbe Loisv. 



To face p. 310. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 311 

for having undertaken to criticise the Bible, but because 
he had the pretension of remaining a Catholic after 
what he had written. M. Ledrain also went so far 
as to say that M. Loisy was as ignorant of theology 
as M. Ferdinand Brunetiere. This he made out by 
calling attention to the fundamental treatise of 
theology, that on "True Religion," which lays down 
that Jesus is God, that His doings and sayings are 
recorded in the Gospels, which were written by 
witnesses who could not deceive themselves or us. 
" La vdrite du Christianisme repose done tout enti^re 
sur I'authenticite des livres ^vangeliques. Pour leur 
donner aux yeux des fideles plus d'autorite I'Eglise 
les a en outre, dotds de inspiration. " So wrote M. 
Ledrain, who added that never had anything so daring 
been declared in the Church; that Luther, Calvin, 
and their followers had never gone so far, for they 
only rejected some dogmas, without trying to overturn 
the corner-stone of the edifice ; that M. Loisy was 
as bold as Strauss ; that he was simply laughing at 
Cardinal Perraud, Bishop of Autun, and other pre- 
lates when, after the storm over " L'Evangile et 
I'Eglise," he wrote "Autour d'un petit livre," which 
was only the development and the "aggravation" 
of what had been condemned already. M. Ledrain 
further wrote that when Rationalism was reached "au 
dela de toutes les limites, on n'a plus qua quitter 
ses anciens pavilions." The ex-Oratorian, although 
long a layman, only re-echoes what orthodox 
Catholics, priests and laymen, think about M. Loisy 
or Renan, or anybody else who ventures on free 
criticism of the sacred books. 

Attacked by nearly all his colleagues and co- 



312 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

religionists in France, Abb6 Loisy enjoyed celebrity 
abroad. The book " L'Evangile et I'Eglise " was 
eagerly bought up and was sold for double and 
treble its original price. Orders came from every- 
where to the publisher, and translations were made 
into English and German. The book was praised 
by the leading English reviews and periodicals, even 
some of those on the Catholic side being favourable. 
In France the broad-minded Archbishop of Albi, 
as he was then, namely Mgr. Mignot, tried to 
defend "L'Evangile et I'Eglise," while admitting that 
it was the boldest book ever written in France by 
a Catholic Priest since the appearance of the " His- 
toire Critique du Vieux Testament " of Richard 
Simon, an Oratorian. M. Gabriel Monod, the French 
Protestant writer, said that the book was a strong 
refutation of the ideas of Harnack and Sabatier, an 
apology for Christianity so splendid that nothing since 
Newman's time had been published more likely to 
recommend Catholicism to the minds of enlightened 
persons. 

Leo the Thirteenth died without having absolutely 
condemned the teachings of Abb6 Loisy, having merely 
issued the vague '■' Providentissiinus'' and appointed a 
committee to examine them, but his successor soon 
"put his foot down," to use a familiar phrase. In 
his encyclical " E Supremi Apostolatus Cathedra,'' 
dated October 4, 1903, Pius the Tenth declared 
that he would see that the clergy would not be 
taken unaware by a new science which by false 
and perfidious argument tries to clear the way for 
the errors of that rationalism or semi-rationalism 
against which the Apostle warned Timothy. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 313 

In the following December came the message from 
Rome condemning the chief books both of Abbe 
Loisy and of Abbe Houtin, his follower and, it may 
be said, his interpreter and Boswell. M. Loisy became 
more famous than ever. The small room where 
he lectured at the Sorbonne was crowded with 
intellectuels when he was to speak. One of the 
professors at the Sorbonne, M. Aulard, who went 
out of curiosity to hear M. Loisy, said that at first 
the priest made so unfavourable an impression upon 
him as he mumbled and hesitated for words that he 
wanted to leave the room. Soon the lecturer reads 
a text from St. Mark, in that part of the Gospel 
referring to the arrest of Jesus, and he suddenly 
warms to his subject, comments critically on the 
narrative of the Apostle, and holds his auditors 
spellbound. Abbe Loisy, still written about volu- 
minously by friends and foes in France, England, 
Germany and Italy, left his post at the Sorbonne, 
saying that he did not want to disturb the consciences 
of Catholics, and that he needed repose and silence 
after all the noise made about him. He left his 
house at Meudon, outside Paris, and went to live at 
Garnay, near Dreux, in a house lent to him by a 
former pupil, M. Francois Thureau-Dangin. His 
enemies then declared that he was no Renan, not 
worth powder and shot, and so on. 

In his retirement M. Loisy is still writing. In 
the beginning of 1906 he contributed a notice of 
Harnack's " Dogmengeschichte," fourth edition, to 
the Revue Critique. This revived some of the old 
polemics, M. Loisy being hotly attacked for stating 
that the Gospel had not accomplished the absolute 



314 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

perfection of Christianity, and that the dogmas and 
institutions of Rome which were the "secular life" 
of the Church were the subsequent acquisitions de 
valeur of the Christian religion. 

Abbe Houtin and others compare the work of 
M. Loisy to that of Professor Robertson Smith, who 
was condemned in Scotland for his opinions. " Like 
the Scotch professor M. Loisy upheld the rights of 
Biblical criticism against the not less intolerant than 
false claims of traditional dogmatism. Brought up 
in the strictest orthodoxy, by a method of compre- 
hension vitiated by the strongest prejudices, he trained 
himself by degrees for the impartial investigation of 
truth. Seeing how science undermined the Church, 
he wished, while continuing to work in an objective 
manner, to furnish means of defence to the religion 
of which he was a priest. Before such an evolution, 
the impartial spirit is of necessity inclined to think 
that if he has not succeeded in his enterprise, it is 
because it is impossible." Thus Abbe Houtin sums 
up the aim and work of his friend. But the orthodox 
Catholics and their heads do not want any such 
moy ens de defense. Their answer has been '' Nontali 
auxilio" and Abb^ Loisy was condemned for his 
attempt to reconcile science and religion. And 
another Catholic, Baron von Hiigel, who was one 
of M. Loisy's champions in 1904, has recently 
reminded us that "all religious institutions without 
exception are at their worst in the matter of their 
relations with science and scholarship, doubtless 
chiefly because they exist at bottom as the incor- 
porations and vehicles of requirements and realities 
deeper, and more immediately important and neces- 
sary, than are even science and scholarship." 



CHAPTER XXII 

Abbe Loisy on the New Testament — The Chicago God — The 
Jesuits and the new critic — Archbishop Mignot's views — 
Loisy and Renan' compared — 1 heir styles — Their arguments 
in Christology — Abbe Loisy's friends and foes — His 
condemnation by Rome. 

OWING to my daily work in Paris I was only- 
able to follow the great controversy between 
the Loisyists and the anti- Loisy ists by fits and starts. 
I read and heard enough, however, to show me 
that Abbe Loisy had been deeply influenced by the 
writings of Cardinal Newman. Dr. von Dollinger 
of Munich had doubted the value of John Henry 
Newman as a historian, but Abbd Loisy classed the 
great Oratorian Cardinal as '* le plus grand et peut-etre 
le seul th^ologien Catholique du XIX^ siecle." Few 
of the English writers, and the same may be said 
of the French critics of Abbe Loisy, have paid much 
attention to the influence of Newman on the 
author of " L'Evangile et I'Eglise." M. Loisy and 
also M. Houtin, have fully explained the former's 
indebtedness to the English Cardinal. M. Loisy 
used, in fact, the "University Sermons," the "Essay 
on the Development of Christian Doctrine," the 
" Grammar of Assent," and other writings of 

315 



316 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

J. H. Newman in replying to Professor Harnack 
of Berlin. Other French writers, as well as M. 
Loisy, used Newman and extolled him, with the 
result that Mgr. Tarinaz, Bishop of Nancy, con- 
demned them. He saw that they were only 
endeavouring, while enthusiastic about Newman, to 
use him as a prop, a support for their innovations 
on essential notions of faith, and particularly on 
what they term the evolution of dogma. 

Confining myself to the two books by M. Loisy 
which have made the most noise, I take his 
" L'Evangile et I'Eglise " first, as it is the first in 
order. Discussing Harnack's method, he says : " If 
Christ had drawn up Himself an exposition of His 
doctrine and a rdsumd of His preaching, a methodical 
treatise of His work, His part, His hopes, history 
would submit this writing to the most attentive 
examination, and would determine on indisputable 
testimony the essence of the Gospel. But such 
a writing has never existed, and nothing can supply 
its absence. We only know Christ by tradition, 
through tradition." Again : " If we wish to find 
out historically the essence of Christianity, the rules 
of sound criticism do not permit us to begin in 
advance to consider as non-essential what seems at 
the present day uncertain or unacceptable. What is 
essential to the Gospel of Jesus is what holds the 
first and most considerable place in His authentic 
teaching, the ideas for which He struggled and died, 
and not merely what we believe still living to-day. 
In the same way, if we desire to define the essence of 
primitive Christianity, it is necessary to find out the 
dominant preoccupation of the first Christians, the ideas 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 317 

forming the life of their rehgion. In applying the same 
method to all the epochs, and in comparing the 
results, we can verify if Christianity has remained 
faithful to the law of its origin, if that which is the 
basis of Catholicism to-day was also the mainstay 
of the Church in the Middle Ages, and in the earlier 
centuries, and if this basis is substantially identical 
to the Gospel of Jesus, or if the clearness of the 
Gospel had been obscured and dark until the 
sixteenth century and even our days. If common 
characteristics have been preserved and developed 
from the origin to our time by the Church, these are 
the characteristics which constitute the essence of 
Christianity. At least the historian cannot know 
others. To fix or find the essence of Islamism it 
would not do to extract from the teaching of the 
Prophet and Mahomedan traditions what would be 
thought true and fruitful, but what for Mahomet and 
his followers is of the greatest importance as regards 
their beliefs, their moral teaching, and their worship. 
If we took a different course, we should soon discover 
with a little good will that the essence of the Koran 
was the same as that of the Gospel — faith in a mild 
and merciful God." 

M. Loisy next deduces by his arguments that the 
Church of Rome being the result of the development 
of Christianity according to Newman's doctrine, it 
is also part of the essence of Christianity. Referring 
to the books, M. Loisy holds that the Gospel of 
St. Mark may be the source of St. Matthew and 
St. Luke, but it is not thereby made an original 
document in the real sense, and it is equally composite 
with the other two. The Fourth Gospel has no 



318 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

claim to be a history, nor does it put forward the 
claim, being purely symbolical and theological, and 
the author is the interpreter of the Founder's life 
through Christian consciousness. The other Gospels 
have also been influenced by Christian speculation on 
the meaning of Christ's life on earth, and M. Loisv 
is careful to affirm that the theological truth of the 
Gospels is not affected in any way by what he says, 
for they interpreted the Christ of history truly. 
Christ did not escape the common law, for His great- 
ness was only felt and known long after His death. 
And discussing the " kingdom of heaven," M. Loisy 
says that it was the idea of a great hope given to the 
Jews, and '* it is in this hope that the historian should 
place the essence of Christianity. The kingdom is 
for all whom God pardons, and God pardons all 
provided that they pardon themselves. Thus the 
Kingdom is for those who are good, following the 
example of God ; and the Gospel, by making love 
the guiding principle of the present life, gives a 
realisation of the kingdom already, but its final 
coming will only mean the assurance of happiness 
and immortality for those inspired by the principles 
of Christian love." According to Harnack, Christ 
had come solely for the Father, and not to draw men 
to Himself. That was the Berlin professor's idea of 
the essence of Christianity. Christ was, then, only 
the agent of the Father, who alone counted. 
M. Loisy, on the other hand, asserts that the Berlin 
professor has relied on a text added by Christian 
tradition to the original teaching of Jesus, and holds 
that Christ was accepted, and wished to be accepted, 
as the Messiah and the Son of God. He says : 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 319 

" Without the conception of the Messiah the Gospel 
would only have been a metaphysical possibility, an 
invisible essence, intangible, nay, unintelligible, for 
want of any definition appropriate to our organs of 
knowledge, rather than a living and victorious reality." 

In the other book "Autour dun Petit Livre," M. 
Loisy deals with the denunciations of his " L'Evangile 
et I'Eglise," and addresses seven letters to French 
ecclesiastics on the questions raised. He maintains in 
this that he is a historian, not a theologian ; but this 
contention of his is open to great doubt, for he ventures 
frequently very near, if he does not go into, the deep 
thickets of theology. In " Autour d'un Petit Livre " M. 
Loisy likewise, with qualifications, affirms his belief 
in Christ's divinity. " Everything shows that Christ 
was man among men, like them in all things save 
only sin, and, it must also be added, the inmost and 
indefinable mystery of His relation with God." 

One of the most remarkable bits of criticism called 
forth by the publication of M. Loisy's two best known 
books was that of Abbe Fontaine in the VeriU 
Franfaise. 

This learned ecclesiastic assured us that all the 
systems, those of Mahomet, Kant, Loisy, only led up 
to the God of the Chicago Congress. " Whence 
comes, then, the force of the system of M. Loisy, and 
whence the noise and the harm of it ? It is easily 
answered. The system harmonises with the spirit of 
modern rationalism ; it answers to all the prejudices, 
errors, fruit of four centuries of Protestantism, of two 
centuries of anti-Christian and atheistical philosophy. 
These conjoined errors were not strong enough to 
damage Catholicism, nor even to destroy those remains 



320 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

of Christianity still existing among the so-called ortho- 
dox sects of Protestantism. To succeed, these errors are 
disguised under evangelical aspects. They refer to 
Christ as Son of the Heavenly Father, and to the God 
of human conscience. Who is this God of the new 
Christians? The transcendent, objective, real God, 
the Creator of everything that exists? No, it is the 
God of the human conscience, created by the human 
conscience, changing and variable as is that conscience 
itself It is the God served up in all the religions 
equally inspired by this deity : the God of Buddhism 
and Brahmanism, of Mahomet and the Koran, the 
God of the Chicago Congress of Religions, whom 
all adore according to their conception of Him." 

Pere Prat, of the Jesuits, was still more emphatic. 
After a masterly rdsumi of M. Loisy's works which 
appeared in the French review of the Society, Etudes, 
he warned Catholics, lay and clerical, whether they 
were close students or merely superficial readers, not 
to be carried away by Abbe Loisy's talent, novelty 
of thought, and liberalism, for he had resolutely taught 
what was "a sort of theological nihilism and of absolute 
subjectivism, which, if pushed to their logical conse- 
quences, would no longer leave us the Church, Jesus 
Christ, revelation, certitude, nor even a personal God." 

Archbishop Mignot did his best to defend his friend 
Abbe Loisy, but he was very cautious in his utter- 
ances. In an article published in the review Le 
Correspondant of January, 1904, he wrote: "Beyond 
doubt certain ideas embodied in M. Loisy's books, 
detached from their contexts, isolated from the whole, 
taken in an^ absolute sense, independently of the very 
special and exclusive aim of the author, without the 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 321 

explanations they require, were of a nature to 
scandalise, or at least to astonish those who only know 
the Bible fragmentarily, and to sadden and alarm 
educated priests, who cannot see without fear the 
methods of the Higher Criticism applied to Holy 
Scripture. If the author, who, with deliberate intention, 
has placed himself at an exclusive point of view, had 
foreseen the consequences deduced from his book, he 
would not have failed to explain his thought more 
fully in his preface, to show that his refutation of 
Harnack is neither an abandonment of the Gospel 
nor the treason of a leader who goes over to the 
enemy ; that the sketch which he draws of the Gospel 
from the strictly historic point of view, in opposition 
to the anti-Christian sketch of the German critic, was 
the only one which answered to the very special 
objections of his adversary. The success of his under- 
taking may be contested, but not the great knowledge 
and the sincerity of the author." 

Before concluding my recollections of the Loisy con- 
troversy, I cannot refrain from giving some extracts 
from the Abbe's writings in the original French. 
They can thus be compared by the reader who 
relishes that supple language with some of Ernest 
Renan's prose. Renan's prose always reminded me 
of the brilliant parterre parts of a beautiful garden. 
Abbe Loisy's style, or rather prose, makes, me think 
of a smooth, well-kept, well-rolled lawn. 

From pages 117, 130, and others of " Autour d'un 
Petit Livre," I take the following : " La divinite de 
J^sus n'est pas un fait de I'histoire evangelique dont 
on puisse verifier critiquement la r^alite, mais c'est la 
definition du rapport qui existe entre le Christ et 

22 



322 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

le Dieu, c'est a dire une croyance dont I'historien 
ne peat que constater I'origine et le d^veloppement. 
. . . La divinite du Christ est une dogme qui a 
grandi dans la conscience chr^tienne, mais qui n'avait 
pas 6te expressement formule dans I'Evangile ; il 
existait seulement en germe dans la notion du Messie, 
fils de Dieu. La resurrection du Sauveur n'est pas 
proprement un fait d'ordre historique, comme a et6 la 
vie terrestre du Christ, mais un fait d'ordre purement 
surnaturel, supra-historique, et elle n'est pas d^mon- 
trable, ni demontree, par le seul temoignage de 
I'histoire, independamment du temoignage de foi, 
dont la force n'est appreciable que pour la foi meme. 
Je dis la meme chose pour I'institution de I'Eglise, en 
tant que cette institution repond a une volonte formelle, 
speciale du Christ, puisque cette volonte n'est pas 
plus verifiable pour I'historien que la gloire meme 
de Jesus ressuscite. Pour I'historien qui se borne a 
la consideration des faits observables c'est la foi au 
Christ qui a fonde I'Eglise ; au point de vue de la foi, 
c'est le Christ lui-meme, vivant pour la foi, et accom- 
plissant par elle ce que I'histoire voit realise. Telle est 
la base solide sur laquelle repose I'Eglise Catholique." 
And here is a passage in " Autour d'un Petit Livre " 
in which M. Loisy, in his letter to an Archbishop, 
who is Mgr. Mignot, refers to a text which he finds 
difficult to reconcile with the traditional teaching 
relative to the divinity of Christ, and also alludes to 
the necessity of clearing away the doubts of young 
men who are likely to leave the Church : "La gravity 
du probleme ne m'echappe nullement et ce n'est pas 
sans reflexion que je le pose. Je n'ai pas besoin, 
monseigneur, de vous dire pourquois je ne puis me 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 323 

resoudre a le formuler en latin et a I'addresser aux 
douze theologiens les plus eminents de notre Eglise. 
Les theologiens eminents qui parlent latin ne sont pas 
toujours disposes a r(^pondre aux questions difficiles. 
Et vraiment ce n'est pas en notre pays de France, 
apres Renan, que Ton peut etonner un lecteur, 
j'entends un lecteur non ecclesiastique, en soulevant 
les questions les peut epineuses. N'ont ils pas tranche 
pour leur propre compte, et trop vite, helas ! le 
probleme du Christ et le probleme de Dieu, tous ces 
laiques instruits, qui, baptises et eleves dans 1' Eglise 
Catholique, sen doignent quand ils ont atteint I'age 
d'homme, parce que notre enseignement religieux 
leur parait con^u en depit de la science et en depit de 
I'histoire. N'est ce pas deja beaucoup faire pour 
eux que de montrer que Ton n'ignore pas leurs 
difficult^s, que Ton ne m^prise pas leur delicatesse 
d esprit, que Ton pense k eux, et que Ton voudrait 
frayer le chemin qui les ramenerait au bercail ? " 

The student or dilettante can compare these extracts 
with the most famous passages in Kenan's ''Vie de 
Jesus," as, for instance, that flowery one beginning, 
'* Une nature ravissante contribuait a former cet esprit," 
on page 64. M. Renan showers all the diamonds 
of his style on the flowers, the fruit, the foliage, 
the vines and the hills of Northern Galilee, just as 
M. Sabatier, author of " Saint Fran9ois d' Assise " 
limned all the tints and tones of the Umbrian land- 
scape. It was Renan who called the country of St. 
Francis of Assisi the ** seraphic province " and the 
" Galilee of Italy." 

Take also M. Renan on Christ at page 457 : 
•* Cette sublime personne, qui chaque jour preside 



324 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

encore au destin du monde, il est permis de I'appeler 
divine, non en ce sens que Jesus ait absorbe tout le 
divin, ou lui ait ^t^ ad^quat (pour employer I'expression 
de la scolastique), mais en ce sens que J^sus est 
I'individu qui a fait faire a son espece le plus grand 
pas vers le divin. L'humanite dans son ensemble 
offre un assemblage d etres bas, ^goistes, superieurs 
a I'animal en cela seul que leur ^goisme est plus 
refl^chi. Mais au milieu de cette uniforme vulgarity, 
des colonnes s'devent vers le ciel est attestent un 
plus noble destin^e. Jesus est la plus haute de ces 
colonnes qui montrent a Thomme d'ou il vient, et 
ou il doit tendre. En lui s'est condense tout ce qui a 
de bon et d'dev^ dans notre nature." After this 
compliment the author of the " Vie de J^sus " adds 
rather illogically : " L'honnete et suave Marc Aurele, 
I'humble et doux Spinoza, n'ayant pas cru au miracle, 
ont 6t6 exempte de quelques erreurs que Jesus par- 
tagea." Thus Marcus Aurelius and the spectacle- 
making philosopher of Amsterdam were superior to the 
Founder of Christianity. But M. Renan goes further 
when he hints that he himself and the other intellectuels 
of his day are also in advance of the Galilean. 

And M. Kenan's explanation of the resurrection of 
Lazarus is, from the Catholic's and the Christian's 
point of view, a monumental audacity. He begins 
by stating : " Les amis de J6sus ddsiraient un grand 
miracle qui frappat vivement I'incr^dulit^ hi^rosoly- 
mite. La resurrection d'un homme connu a Jerusalem 
dut parattre ce qu'il y avait de plus convaincant. II 
faut se rappeler ici que la condition essentielle de la 
vrai critique, et de comprendre la diversity des temps, 
et de se d^pouiller des repugnances instinctives qui 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 325 

sont le fruit dune Education purement raisonnable. 
II faut se rappeler ici que dans cette ville impure et 
pesante de Jerusalem, Jesus n'^tait plus lui-meme. Sa 
conscience par la faute des hommes, et non par la 
sienne, avait perdu quelque chose de sa limpidite 
primordiale. . . . Peut-etre Lazare, pale encore de 
sa maladie, se fit-il entourer de bandelettes comme 
un mort, et enfermer dans son tombeau de famille. 
J^sus d^sira voir encore une fois celui qu'il avait aime, 
et la pierre ayant ^t^ ^cart^e, Lazare sortait avec ses 
bandelettes, et la tete entour^e d'un suaire. Cette 
apparition dut naturellement etre regard^e par tout 
le monde comme une resurrection. La foi ne connatt 
d'autre loi que I'interet de ce quelle croit le vrai. . . . 
Quant k Jesus, il netait pas plus maitre que Saint 
Bernard, que Saint Francois d' Assise de moderer 
I'avidite de la foule et de ses propres disciples pour 
le merveilleux. La mort, d'ailleurs, allait dans 
quelques jours lui rendre sa liberte divine, et 
I'arracher aux fatales necessit^s d'un role qui chaque 
jour devenait plus exigeant, plus difficile a soutenin" 
If M. Renan and Abb^ Loisy differed in style, they 
both reached the same conclusions — that there were 
no historic proofs of the divinity of Christ. ^ Both 

I Rome has seen other Renans and Loisys. She had the 
Gnostics in the third century and the Agnostics of the nineteenth 
and twentieth centuries, and she has always proclaimed that 
Christ is true God and true man. Arianism and Nestorianism 
followed the old contentions about the nature of Christ. These 
contentions were dealt with by the Councils of Nicaea, Ephesus, 
and Chalcedon. The very latest imitator of Renan and Loisy 
is the Norrisian Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, who, in 
" The Gospel History and its Transmission," rejects the resur- 
rection of Lazarus because it is not in St. Mark's Gospel. He 



326 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

also raised the same tempests by their writings. I 
have already alluded to the chief denouncers of Abb6 
Loisy and Loisyism. There were also the former 
friends who deserted the author of *' L'Evangile et 
L'Eglise " when he was in trouble with Rome. 
Abbe Houtin, in his ** Question biblique au XX^ 
Siecle," tells us of these. Cardinal Mathieu, resident 
at Rome, who had originally promised to recommend 
Abbe Loisy for a bishopric, gave him up at once. 
Mgr. Bonomelli, Bishop of Cremona, published a long 
letter against him in La Lega Lombarda, although 
the orthodoxy of the Italian prelate in question was 
challenged in France, and Mgr. Sermonnet, Archbishop 
of Bourges, censured the too daring critic of the 
Scriptures in the weekly paper of his diocese. I 
happen to have read Mgr. Sermonnet's repudiation 
in his Semaine Religieuse. It is a strong docu- 
ment. The Archbishop or his secretary and sub- 
editor writes : " We do not intend to recall here 
what M. Loisy professes with regard to the authority 
of the Scriptures and tradition, on the divinity of 
Jesus Christ, on the Redemption brought about by 
His death, on the formation and the development of 
belief, on dogma, on discipline, on worship, and many 
other things. We content ourselves with declaring 
that his system in general seems to us constructed on 
subjectivism. It is a kind of review and recast of 
Catholic teaching composed by the light of some 
Kantian principles combined with those of rationalist 
criticism. M. Sabatier, late Dean of the Protestant 
Faculty of Paris, had already tried to popularise 

also tries to show that the Fourth Gospel was written by a Jew 
of Jerusalem, a Sadducee. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 327 

among us the conclusions of the Ritschl School, ^ and 
M. Loisy, without knowing it perhaps — for we do 
not wish to suspect his intentions — walks in the path 
marked out by M. Sabatier." And then follow warn- 
ings against any attempt to subvert the teaching of 
the Church, and advice to learned critics to remain 
quiet, and to imitate the humility of the theologians, 
"who have never asserted their infallibility and who 
have allowed their systems to be retouched and 
completed by a wise progressivism, doing nothing 
hastily," and so on. 

The decree condemning Abbe Loisy 's books was 
issued from Rome in December, 1903, signed by 
Cardinal Steinhuber, S.J., Prefect of the Sacred 
Congregation of the Index, and by the Secretary, 
Father Esser, Dominican. The books are: "La 
Religion d'Israel," "L'Evangile et I'Eglise," "Etudes 
Evangeliques," "Autour d'un Petit Livre," and " Le 
Quatrieme Evangile." By the same decree Abbe 
Houtin was condemned for his "Question bibliques 
chez les Catholiques de France au XIX^ Siecle " and 
his " Mes Difficult^s avec mon Eveque." To all 
true believers the decision of Rome is final, and no 
Catholic can read the condemned books. 

^ Ritschl's teaching on faith and morals is set forth by his 
disciple, Dr. Herrmann, Professor of Dogmatic Theology in the 
University of Marburg, in a book translated by two English 
clergymen and published in 1904 by Messrs. Williams and 
Norgate. According to Ritschl, faith involves submission to an 
authoritative revelation, as Roman theologians teach, but the 
revelation comes directly to the soul, and this subjective con- 
sciousness of God becomes the supreme authority which nothing 
can weaken, and this consciousness is realised in the experience 
of Christ on earth. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

French literary men at home and abroad — M. Anatole France 
and his critics — M. France and M. Lemaitre — Their special 
knowledge of French — M. France on his master, Renan — 
M. Joris Karl Huysmans and his views on modern novelists 
— M. Maurice Barres and his books — Some vanished 
literary celebrities — James Darmesteter as I knew him — 
Darmesteter and Spinoza — " L' Esprit Juif" — Ferdinand 
Brunetiere and M. Buloz — Brunetiere's " Discours de 
Combat" — His death. 

OF the French literary men I can only say that 
I have know^n about half a dozen. These 
were Zola, Dumas Ji/s, Ohnet, a little ; Funck 
Brentano, author of those remarkable volumes on 
the Bastille and mysterious poisonings of the past ; 
Pierre de Nolhac, the historian of Marie Antoinette and 
of Versailles and James Darmesteter, the celebrated 
Jewish scholar and writer, who was cut off in his 
prime. I have corresponded with M. Maurice Barres, 
novelist and Deputy, and have had vague meetings 
with a few others of the literary fraternity. Anatole 
France I saw rather at a disadvantage a few months 
before I left Paris. 

It was shortly after the Dreyfus agitation, when 
he went to deliver an address, not on Dreyfus, but on 
Russia, at the Freemasons' Hall of the Rue Cadet. 
He was in anything but what is termed " good form " 
on the occasion. I was quite close to him on the plat- 

328 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 329 

form, and his resemblance to M. Emile Combes, the 
great monk-hunter, struck me as remarkable. An 
ordinary, rather undersized, elderly French gentleman 
with moustache and a chin beard, something like the 
** Imperial " of old, quite grey. M. France is no 
orator, as M. Combes is. He never tries to speak 
extempore, and on the occasion to which I refer 
he read his discourse to the auditors in the Free- 
masons' Hall. He denounced the Russian Govern- 
ment and the Tsar for the persecutions of Jews 
and for the bad and backward state of the country. 
The paper was well written, but it fell flat on the 
audience. That was simply because the auditors 
wanted a ready orator, a man with the "gift of the 
gab." They listened languidly to the finely-chiselled 
sentences in Anatole France's paper, and they 
applauded faintly. The case was different when they 
were addressed immediately afterwards by a pro- 
fessional oratorical fellow, whose platitudes, expressed 
in rhetorical language, brought tempests of applause. 
I saw Anatole France listening to the man in an 
apparently interested way, and could not help contrast- 
ing the finished writer, who won no mob applause by 
making a speech, and the rough orator who was 
receiving approving acclamation at the end of every 
sentence. 

It was in the Eighties that Anatole France began to 
make his mark as a writer. It was known that he 
was a born Parisian, and that his father had kept a 
bookshop on, or near, the quays. He wrote social 
and critical articles for the Temps, and he subsequently 
leaped into fame by his " Orme du Mail," and the 
other books, which caused him to be bracketed with 



330 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

M. Jules Lemaitre by the critic Gaston Deschamps, 
who wrote : " Get ecrivain Lemaitre est, je crois, avec 
M. Anatole France, celui de nos ainees qui connait le 
mieux les ressources et les malices de la langues Fran- 
9aise." One of the finest specimens of M. France's 
style I find in an old number of the Temps, in 
which he reviews his master, Renan's, " Histoire du 
Peuple d'Israel." I cannot help quoting some extracts, 
as it shows admirably the progress of scientific 
criticism of the Bible and the exact value of Renan's 
work : " Tous nous avons feuillet^ autrefois, une vieille 
bible en estampes. Tous nous nous sommes fait de 
I'origine du monde et des choses une id^e simple, 
enfantine et naive. II y a quelque chose d'^mouvant, 
ce me semble, a rapprocher cette id^e puerile de 
la realite telle que la science nous la fait toucher. A 
mesure que notre intelligence prend possession d'elle- 
meme et de I'univers, le passe recule indefiniment et 
nous reconnaissons qu'il nous est interdit d'atteindre 
aux commencements de I'homme et de la vie. Si 
avant que nous remontons les temps, des perspectives 
nouvelles, des profondeurs inattendues s'ouvrent sans 
cesse devant nous ; nous sentons qu'un abime est au 
dela. Nous voyons le trou noir et I'effroi gagne les 
plus hardis. Ge berger nomade qu'on nous montre 
entoure, dans la nuit du desert, des ombres des Elohim, 
il etait le fils d'une humanite deja vieille, et pour ainsi 
dire, aussi eloignee que la notre du commun berceau. 
G'en est fait. L'homme moderne, lui aussi, a dechire sa 
vieille bible en estampes. Lui aussi, il a laisse au fond 
d'une boite de Nuremberg les dixou douze patriarches 
qui, en se donnant la main, formaient une chaine qui 
allait jusqu'a la creation. Ge n'est pas, d'aujourd'hui 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 331 

on le sait, que I'ex^gese a trouve la sens veritable de 
la Bible h^braique. Les vieux textes sur lesquels 
reposait une croyance tant de fois seculaire subissent, 
depuis cent ans, deux cent ans meme le libre examen 
de la science. Je suis incapable d'indiquer precis^ment 
la part qui revient a M. Renan dans la critique biblique. 
Mais ce qui lui appartient, j'en suis star, c'est I'art 
avec lequel il anime le passe lointain, c'est I'intelligence 
qu'il nous donne de I'antique Orient dont il connait si 
bien le sol et les races, c'est son talent de peindre 
les paysages, c'est sa finesse a discerner, a defaut 
des certitudes, le probable et la possible, c'est 
enfin son don particulier de plaire, de charmer, 
de seduire. Ceux qui ont le bonheur de I'avoir 
entendu lui-meme croient en le lisant cette fois, 
I'entendre encore. C'est lui, son accent, son geste. 
En fermant le livre, je suis tent^ de dire, comme les 
pelerins d'Emmaus : Nous venons de le voir. Iletaita 
cette table.' II a des familiarit^s charmantes comme 
quand il appelle Jahve, le terrible Jahve * une 
creature de I'esprit le plus borne ! " Here M. France 
quotes the famous passage about the capriciousness, 
the favouritism, the narrow-mindedness, the love for 
sacrifices, massacres, and unjust punishments, of 
Jahve, and concludes with a touch of irony over the 
method of his old master: "Ou done est mon vieux 
recueil d'images saintes, dans lesquelles ce meme Jahve 
se promenait avec tant de majesty a travers une 
prairie de Hollande, au milieu de moutons du Cap, 
de petits cochons d'Inde et de chevaux du Brabant." 
In " Sylvestre Bonnard," which some regard as the 
author's masterpiece, M. Anatole France gives a 
portrait of himself. He is to be found, however. 



332 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

everywhere in his books, even in the " Noces 
Corinthiennes " and in "Thais." It is the same 
restless and observant wanderer or traveller. He 
has even been accused of too much presentation 
of self in his writings, including those of a critical 
character. It is in " Sylvestre Bonnard" that M. 
France has that old joke in a new form about books 
and book learning. " Oh, what a lot of books ! " says 
Mademoiselle Prefere as she enters M. Bonnard's 
library, "Have you read them all, M. Bonnard?" 
"Alas! yes; that is why I am so ignorant of every- 
thing." This is a variant of the opening of " Faust," 
who after much studying of philosophy and the rest, 
is the same as before. In M. France's case, his 
father's bookshop must have been well used by him, 
and to some practical purpose, for his friends make 
him out to be a compound of Montaigne, Rabelais, 
La Bruyere, Voltaire, Swift, Sterne, and Dickens. 

Another interesting literary man, most of whose 
work I have read, is Huysmans,^ one of the M^dan 
school, but who abandoned, partially at least, realism 
for hagiology some years since, and became for a time 
a sort of lay Benedictine, living near the monastery of 
Ligug^ until the monks were expelled by M. Combes. 
His books, "La-Bas," "En Route," the " Cath^drale," 
" L'Oblat," require a lot of reading, but they are the 
quaint productions of a clever platitudinarian, who has 
an original, architectural and attractive style. He is an 
ironist, too, and says acid things. One of the sayings 
attributed to him is this : " Je vomis les classes 
dirigeantes, et les classes dirigees me degotatent." 
M. Huysmans has been soured by penury, a long 
' M. Huysmans died in May, 1907. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 333 

life in a Government office, and a weak stomach. 
This has not prevented him from doing good 
service to French literature. Only a few months 
before I left Paris the author of "En Route" 
was asked his opinion on the prevailing tendency 
in fiction. He was outspoken, and replied : " Anarchy 
and confusion. There are the bores such as 
Bourget, who proceed from naturalism. They are 
the Organists of literature. The last movement 
gifted with life was that of the naturalists. All comes 
from that. You have the non-fashionable novelists, 
who work on the love of a baker for a fruiterer's wife ; 
then come the more aristocratic writers, who do the 
same thing for viscounts and marchionesses, or perhaps 
doctors and engineers are also used instead of the 
noblemen. They are very fine with their psychology. 
At bottom it is all the same with viscounts, bakers, 
marchionesses. And they all centre over the one 
thing— whether the woman will give way or not. I 
never care a fig whether she does or not. It is all 
that eternal feminine adultery stuff." At the same 
time, the old novelist, or master as his admirers call 
him, considered that the lady novelists are doing 
better than the men nowadays. He especially praised 
Judith Gautier, the gifted daughter of Theophile 
Gautier, Madame Rachilde, who wrote "Hors-nature," 
and Myriam Harry, authoress of the " Conqliete de 
Jerusalem." Even for the Countess de Noailles and 
her " Visage emerveillee " he had some respect, in 
spite of the strenuous advertising of which she was 
the object. M. Huysmans also thought that the 
weakness of male authors arose from the fact that 
Zola made money. When that fact became known, 



334 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

grocers caused their sons to write, and the result was 
deplorable. Asked about the Catholic novelists, 
M. Huysmans shook his head. He has not the high 
opinion of M. Ren6 Bazin that the majority have. 
The Catholics are hostile to art. They are afraid 
of words, and victims of Jansenism and Jesuitism. 
For them wherever art begins sin comes along. And 
when Catholics objected to some passages in his own 
remarkable volumes, M. Huysmans simply told them 
not to read his books, and to confine themselves to the 
literary merchandise of the Pink Library, which was 
intended for them expressly. 

M. Octave Mirbeau, a strong writer, gave a more 
serious view than M. Huysmans of the tendencies in 
modern French literature, when he was asked his 
opinion. M. Mirbeau thinks that for literature 
ordinary life is the thing. It ought to be the repro- 
duction of the living being in his relations to nature, 
morals, and laws. There ought to be no preaching, 
no moralising, either in novels or in plays, and 
M. Mirbeau regretted that he had erred in this 
particular in his " Mauvais Bergers." He is also the 
author of the " Roman d'une Fille de Chambre," in 
which he has certainly given a lurid picture of the life 
of an Abigail, and thus kept to his programme. The 
Abigail romance is full of huge " chunks of life," to 
use Mr. A. W. Pinero's rendering of Zola's famous 
phase, " tranches de vie.'' Unlike M. Huysmans, 
M. Mirbeau, who was originally a police official, 
does not object to the introduction of the sons of 
grocers into the sacred guild of literature. He has 
a welcome for all. He praised unstintedly a literary 
farmer, Emile Guillaumin, who gave a thorough 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 335 

picture of country life in his " Memoires d'un 
Metayer." Another favourite of his is Andre Gide, 
author of the *' Immoraliste " ; and he praises the 
•' Coeurs Malades " of Eugene Montfort. In this 
respect M. Mirbeau imitates that much-abused man, 
Georges Ohnet, who since his "Maitre des Forges" 
has gone from success to success. Was there ever a 
novehst so decried as M. Ohnet? One man attacks 
him over his muhitudinous adjectives, another calls his 
work the quintessence of the commonplace, and 
M. Jules Lemattre once wrote: " II a lel^gance des 
chromolithographes, la noblesse des sujets de pendule, 
les effets de cuisse des cabotins, le sentimentalisme 
des romances." M. Ohnet goes on writing, interest- 
ing numerous readers, and adding to his considerable 
banking account, in spite of all the sarcasm, in spite of 
the sneers of the greater literary artist over chromo- 
lithographs, drawing-room clocks and mummers' thigh 
effects, and he is also tender towards the young. 
" Let them all come," said M. Ohnet once, referring to 
the rising writers. 

In M. Mirbeau's utterances on modern literary 
men I find that, while regarding Paul Bourget as 
dead and buried, he has nothing but praise for 
Maurice Barres, author of **Sous I'oeil des Barbares," 
the "Jardin de Berenice," the " Deracines," and 
" Au Service de I'Allemagne." Barres has been 
accused by others of creating factitious personages, 
and of borrowing from books, inspiration being absent, 
but his style is perfect. All are agreed on that point, 
and it means a good deal. He is also told that he 
has spoiled his chances as a literary artist by devoting 
himself to politics, and there was some reason for 



336 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

saying this after his parliamentary play, " Leurs 
Figures," which is a ponderous composition, spoiled by 
bad jokes and bad taste. He did better in his novel, 
"Au Service d'Allemagne," which has been praised, 
not only as a work of art, but as being valuable as an 
historical document, showing the influence of German 
discipline on a young man of Alsace, who is French 
in head and heart, and showing also that even under 
Teutonic domination the people of that conquered 
province remain true to the old traditions. This is 
undoubtedly a fact, but it hardly needed the novel of 
M. Barres to remind those who know the Alsatians 
that the latter are not likely to lose what they owe to 
France in the aesthetic way, and that they will long 
retain their preference for a Republican or democratic 
government to one of an imperial and aristocratic kind. 

I can say very little about Jules Lemaitre, except 
what everybody knows. He first loomed up in 
the columns of the Temps about the same time as 
Anatole France. It was known then that he was a 
provincial, a normal schoolman, a universitaire, and 
that he had thrown up the schoolmaster's ferule for 
the pen of the journalist and littdrateuTy as Taine, 
About, Sarcey, and others had done before him. 
Then he published the " Contemporains," a series of 
pen portraits of literary celebrities, was for some years 
dramatic critic of the Journal des Ddbats, began to 
write plays, and succeeded. In fact, M. Lemaitre has 
been successful in everything that he has touched 
except politics. I have already shown the disastrous 
effects of his connection with M. Syveton and the 
Patrie Franpaise league. 

M. Lemaitre has an imitator in M. Emile Faguet, 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 337 

also a universitaire, who writes articles for news- 
papers as well as dramatic criticism. He is a man 
who has something to say on nearly every subject 
under the sun, and treats philosophy, politics, soci- 
ology, and the rest in a very masterly manner. Unlike 
M. Lemaitre, he has not yet written a play, but that, 
no doubt, will come. He has recently, in 1904, been 
before the public as the author of an ably-written 
volume, " Le Liberalisme," in which he treats the 
Church and State question. 

A French literary man of the past whom I much 
regretted was James Darmesteter, who used to assist 
Renan a good deal, and who wrote on his own account 
as well. I used to meet him before he went to India, 
and returned home to die, at the bookshop of a Scotch 
resident in Paris, Mr. Fotheringham, long retired. 
Mr. Fotheringham, who acted as commercial agent 
for the Times, besides being a bookseller, had a good 
many famous people, French, English, and American 
in his place from time to time. I have met there 
diplomatists, authors, abb^s, and journalists. All the 
famous Scotchmen who came to Paris were sure to 
call at Fotheringham's, who also numbered among 
his acquaintances Father Forbes, the Franco-Scottish 
Jesuit. It was at Fotheringham's that I first met James 
Darmesteter, for whose marriage with Miss Mary 
Robinson, the poetess, I was as unprepared as I was 
for his premature death. James Darmesteter was 
only forty-five when he died, in 1894. His brother 
Arsene Darmesteter, also a scholar and writer, died in 
1888. They were born at Chateau-Salins in Lorraine. 
Their father had come from the ghetto in Darmstadt, 
and to reside in France he had to choose a surname. 



338 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

He took the name " Darmstadter," and the French 
gave it the other form. The father was a bookseller 
and binder, and had a hard struggle in Paris when he 
came there. Early privations were supposed to have 
told on his two gifted boys. These were sent to the 
Talmud Torah College in Paris, the seminary of the 
Jewish Consistory. They afterwards went to the 
Charlemagne and the Condorcet Colleges, where they 
won many prizes. James became a professor at the 
Ecole des Hautes Etudes, and attracted the notice of 
Max Mliller by his works on Persian literature. He 
was engaged afterwards to do an English translation 
of the Avesta for the collection of the sacred books 
of the East. James Darmesteter while in England 
devoted a good deal of his time to the study of Shake- 
speare and of Byron. On returning to Paris he was 
o-iven the chair of Iranian languages at the College 
of France. He next went to India and foregathered 
with the learned Parsees. James Darmesteter was 
a dark little man, looking undoubtedly Oriental. He 
did not go to the Synagogue, but believed in, or at 
least revered, the Bible. He had also a great respect 
for Christianity, and would never in conversation 
offend any man's religious susceptibilities. In his fine 
book on the Prophets of Israel he has the passage 
sometimes quoted as an example of his attitude 
towards Christianity. It is that in the preface : '' La 
science a cru quelle etait la reine du monde, et le 
Chretien lui a dit, *Tu as souffle sur mon Christ, tu as 
ferme devant mois les avenues de I'eternite." And in 
the course of his volume Darmesteter advises the 
Catholics of Rome to abide by the teaching of his 
favourite prophets, retaining only the finest and most 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 339 

sublime parts of the Gospels. He was a noble Jew, 
this Darmesteter, with nothing of the Heinrich Heine 
about him. He was rather like Baruch Spinoza, who 
is described as being simple, modest, tolerant, 
generous, and disinterested. Arsene Darmesteter, 
brother of James, was only forty-two when he died. 
He was sent in 1869 to Oxford, to Cambridge and 
to the British Museum to study the French glosses 
in the manuscripts of Rashi, the learned Jew of 
Troyes, who died in 1105, ^^^ who was an authority 
on mediaeval French. 

I often thought of James Darmesteter as I was 
reading that most interesting book by M. Maurice 
Muret, " L'esprit Juif," which has some points of 
resemblance to " Die Judenfrage " of the German 
Duhring, published in Berlin in 1892, and is really the 
development of a part of M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu's 
" Israel chez les Nations." M. Muret holds, with 
Diihring, that the characteristics of the Jews, their 
supple intelligence, their attachment to the enjoyments 
of life, their patient expectancy, exemplified in the 
case of Captain Dreyfus, for instance, their tenacity 
of purpose, their pride, appear in those who are 
attached to the Synagogue or who have broken 
away from it. From this he deduces that the Jew is 
the product, not of the religion, but of the race. His 
most typical Jew is Spinoza. Now, according to old 
biographers of Spinoza, particularly M. Saisset, who 
also translated his works into French, the author of 
the ** Tractatus Theologico-Politicus " lived like an 
anchorite at the Hague, declined to attire in costly 
garb his body, which he counted mere dust, and 
refused to allow a wealthy friend to endow him with 



340 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

sufficient means to enable him to dispense with making 
glasses for spectacles. M. Muret states that from 
recent researches relative to Spinoza's sojourn at the 
Hague, it has been made clear that the philosopher 
was by no means a hermit. On the contrary, he went 
into society a good deal, walked with sword by his 
side like any of the gay gallants, or men about town 
of the period, and was a heavy and, in fact, a 
gluttonous eater. He ate so much that it hastened 
on his death, and caused the phthisis which finished 
him. The other biographers say that he used to be 
satisfied with milk soup, some bread and a can of beer 
for his daily sustenance, and they are probably correct 
when they affirm that he was marked by consumption 
for its own from his birth. I have entered into this 
digression, seemingly foreign to my subject, for the 
purpose of recalling the memory of James Darmesteter. 
There is a connection, however, between Darmesteter 
and the celebrated philosophical Jew of Holland. 
Darmesteter was consumptive, and died at exactly the 
same age as Baruch or Benedict Spinoza, who lived 
from 1632 to 1677, forty-five years. Moreover, Dar- 
mesteter is not only mentioned in M. Muret's pages, 
but that author quotes from his " Coup d'ceil sur 
rhistoire du peuple Juif," a pamphlet incorporated in 
the " Prophetes d' Israel," published by Calmann-Levy 
in 1892. And who knows but James Darmesteter, if he 
had lived, would have left behind a legacy as great as 
that bequeathed to posterity by the illustrious Hebrew 
philosopher of Amsterdam ? He had a strong brain 
in a weak body, he had left the Synagogue in order 
to be free, and even in his personal appearance was not 
unlike Spinoza, who is described by his French trans- 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 341 

lator, M. Saisset, as "a man of medium stature, 
regular features, skin rather dark, black hair and 
eye-lashes, and all the outward marks showing his 
descent from Portuguese Jews." James Darmesteter 
was also supposed to resemble Giacomo Leopardi, the 
Italian poet and pessimist. When he was on the 
banks of the Arno at Florence, it is said that the 
Florentines pointed to him as " // piccolo Leopardi.'' 
I do not think that Darmesteter was by any means a 
pessimist, and it was not he who would endorse 
Leopardi's maxim that life was only fit to be despised. 
France lost one more literary man of great value 
in Ferdinand Brunetiere, who, although he lived 
thirteen years longer than James Darmesteter, may 
be said to have passed away before his time. He, 
too, was a chronic invalid, and it was a wonder that 
one so organically weak could have put forth such a 
mass of literary work as that signed by Brunetiere. I 
only knew the man through his writings, and, although 
it was the fashion on the boulevards to sneer at him 
and his old-fashioned craze for resuscitating- such longf- 
dead worthies as Bossuet, for example, I always read 
him with attention, and enjoyed his gnarled and rugged 
French. He also appealed to me as being one of those 
who had struggled. He was a provincial, a Toulon 
man, and in early days in Paris had to teach for a 
living. It was his friend Paul Bourget who first intro- 
duced him to the proprietor of the Revue des Deux 
Mondes, of which he became editor. Bourget had also 
struggled in Paris in his youth, but he came to know 
FranQois Buloz, director of the Deux Mondes, and wrote 
some articles for him. Buloz was satisfied with the 
work, and asked Bourget for a study, or critical review, 



342 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

of French poetry. They had a conversation on the 
subject, but did not agree, Buloz having a different 
conception of French poetry to that of Bourget. 
The latter left Buloz lamenting in his study the 
death of Planche, who would have done what he 
wanted. The chief sub-editor of the Deux Mondes 
took Bourget aside, and also began to talk about 
the work which the director wanted done, where- 
upon the novelist thought of his friend Brunetiere 
and recommended him. " Oh ! " said the chief sub, 
" I don't know what to do. We have tried so 
many literary critics," a statement rather unpleasant 
for the gentlemen of letters who had been '* tried " 
before M. Brunetiere. The recommendation of Paul 
Bourget was acted upon, but when he went to see 
Brunetiere he found, to his surprise, that the latter 
hesitated before accepting a post on the great Review. 
That was as M. Bourget says, first on account of his 
natural pessimism, and secondly by reason of his 
pride, for he was afraid of being commanded or 
hustled. He made up his mind soon after, and was 
not only the literary critic of the Buloz Review, but 
edited it. He killed himself by overwork, and actually 
sought to do so. His early struggles and bad health 
made him see everything black and gloomy, so he 
worked to throw off his melancholy. His output was 
tremendous, and it not only astonished the world, but it 
alarmed his friends and the admirers of his undoubted 
talent. No man had handled literary subjects in so 
masterly a manner since Taine and Sainte-Beuve, and 
even those who were against him when he became a 
Nationalist, an anti-Dreyfusard, and a "practising" 
Catholic had to admit his ability. The Loisyists, 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 343 

however, objected to his interference with the 
exegetists, because he had said in one of his " Dis- 
cours de Combat " that so far as exegesis and criticism 
had for their object the raising of doubts as to the 
truth of religion, they had egregiously failed. He 
later on said that rationalistic exegesis, which was the 
great *' worker" of doubt in religion, would continue 
to be so until it was conquered on its own ground by 
that of erudition. From this he went on to quote 
from the First Episde to the Corinthians proofs of the 
resurrection of Christ, and Abbe Houtin promptly 
accused him of using only a truncated text, and of 
leaving out the eighth verse : " And last of all He was 
seen of me also, as of one born out of due time " ; that is 
to say, Paul was only a visionary witness. In any case, 
the Catholic cause lost in Ferdinand Brunetiere an 
active, ardent, and able champion. Taine and Sainte- 
Beuve, the precursors of Brunetiere, had both some 
respect for Catholicism. This was notably the case 
with Sainte-Beuve, who was a Catholic born, whereas 
Taine was a Protestant. Brunetiere was not, however, 
sentimental, but thoroughly practical, in defending his 
Church. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

Pierre Loti at Aden— The French dramatists — The old play- 
wrights and the new — Rise of M. Antoine — His early 
efforts and failures — His series of new men — Henri 
Becque — The Comedie Rosse — The men from Antoine's : 
Lavedan, Donnay, Brieux, Francois de Curel, Courteline 
— M. Capus at home — M. Brieux and his " Avaries " — 
Courtehne's bag of tricks — M. Paul Hervieu and the 
"Dedale"— M. Edmond Rostand and M. Coquehn— The 
French poets: Hugo, Lamartine, Baudelaire, Verlaine — 
The only comic poet. 

THERE is a vast difference, social and literary, 
between Pierre Loti and Ferdinand Brunetiere 
the critic, of whom I have been writing in the pre- 
ceding chapter. Loti's prose lingers in my memory. 
It is as different from that of Brunetiere as is marble 
of Paros or Carrara from granite. He was one of my 
earliest favourites, but he has gone out of fashion now. 
He has written rather too much, and at one time he 
continued to publish with the rapid regularity of 
" Gyp." Loti is one of those writers who want to 
make me translate him against my wish, for I do 
not believe in trying to turn fine French prose into 
English. I have always held that it is impossible to 
render adequately in English the prose of Flaubert, 
Anatole France, Brunetiere, Renan, or any of the 
masters of style. They have to be read and enjoyed 

344 




Photo] 



PlERRI': LOTI 



Benqite 



To face p. 344. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 345 

— " tasted," the French say — in the original, or not 
at all. Translated they fall as flat in English as does 
in French the prose of Ruskin or of George Meredith, 
or the poetry of Shelley, Swinburne, Browning, or 
William Morris. With Pierre Loti I found it dif- 
ferent, and while enjoying his prose I tried to give 
an English equivalent of it. Here is a sample which 
I once proposed to show to him, but could not find 
him in Paris, where he used to come only now and 
then, his naval work as Captain Viaud, which is his 
real name, keeping him at various ports. It is his 
description of the Gulf of Aden, a place familiar to 
Anglo-Indians and travellers to the Farther East : 
" Day dawns in the Gulf of Aden, a region of intense 
heat and of phantasmal mists. Before us who return 
from the Indies under an unchanging blue sky, the 
horizon is as it were closed by heavy veils of a grey 
violet, almost black. To a sailor's eye there is land 
there, opaque and immovable, a vast continent. 
We approach a long, limitless, and monotonous shore 
of hard and ravined sand, pink in tint, brilliant in 
early morning, with depths beyond of intense shade. 
There, in the region of shade, obscure, sombre, deep, 
seems to be the place where all the storms of the 
earth are hatched. As we gaze along the shore, 
the immensity of the place is revealed to us. We 
feel the impression of Africa, vast and desolate. 
We see little arbutus shrubs, pale green, which give 
no shade from the sun. Everywhere a dry heat, 
unlike the boiler evaporations of Annam and Cochin- 
China, for it has swept across the boundless desert." 
Pierre Loti excels in poetic description. His books 
have been described as poetic guides over land and 



346 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

sea. He is said never to open an umbrella when he 
sees tropical rain falling, but he outs with his note- 
book and describes the rain straight off. He does 
the same when he meets a tropical pond, or pool, 
or marsh — he halts on the bank and describes the 
thing. And he goes on doing this continually. And 
he can also tell a good story, as in " Mon frere Ives," 
" Pecheur d'Islande," and "Aziyad6." Despite the 
seeming simplicity of his style, M. Viaud has been 
inspired by Flaubert, at least in some of his earlier 
works. 

Coming to the French dramatists, I must confess 
that I have not taken so much interest in them as 
I have in the novelists, essayists, critics, and his- 
torians. This was chiefly because I had lost touch 
with the stage at a time when dramatic production 
was at a low ebb. I have been accustomed to 
Augier, Dumas fils, Meilhac, Sardou, Pailleron, and 
Gondinet. I was also a witness of M. Antoine's 
efforts to abolish the Conservatoire and to revolu- 
tionise the French stage. He did not succeed in 
doing away with the old house, the '' boite'' in the 
Faubourg Poissonniere, but he has revolutionised the 
French stage. When I knew him first he was a 
struggling clerk in the Gas Company's offices near 
Montmartre. He opened his first show in a passage, 
also near Montmarte, called the Elysde des Beaux 
Arts, in March, 1887. With him were strugglers 
like himself, a clerk at the Prefecture of the Seine, 
a post office sorter, a bookseller's despatch man, a 
journeyman painter, an advertisement canvasser, one 
journalist, and several women, including Mademoiselle 
Barny, a dressmaker who lent her furniture for the 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 347 

" show." At the first night in the dingy den in the 
Elys^e of the Fine Arts, M. Antoine and his col- 
leagues played four short pieces. By degrees 
Antoine succeeded until he founded the " Theatre 
Libre " definitely, and had all Paris to his playhouse. 
He is now manager of the Odeon, but keeps an 
eye on his former establishment. In the old days 
Antoine was continually trying new dramatists, in- 
spired mostly by Ibsen, and it was sometimes 
wearying to watch the process. At last some of 
the young men "caught on," and a new era of 
dramatic production dawned. The days of Augier, 
Dumas fits, Sardou, Pailleron, Gondinet were over. 
Meilhac and Halevy were no longer wanted. They 
had their masterpieces, " La Belle Hdene," in 
operetta ; " Frou-frou," in high comedy ; " L'Et6 de 
la Saint Martin" and the "Petite Marquise," in 
sentimental and satirical or ironic comedy. Now 
they must go down before the "Comedie nouvelle," 
the "Comedie Rosse," heralded by Henry Becque's 
" Les Corbeaux " and "La Parisienne," founded at 
Antoine's theatre and developed by Jules Lemaitre, 
Henri Lavedan, Hervieu, Brieux, Donnay. Henri 
Lavedan was one of the first successful jeunes from 
Antoine's. He triumphed with nearly all his plays, 
the "Prince d'Aurec," "Viveurs," " Le Nouveau 
Jeu," " Le Vieux Marcheur," " Le Marquis de 
Priola." He reached the Academy with his 
"Nouveau Jeu," a play '' ddcolletde jusqu a la 
ceinture,'' as a shocked critic wrote who denounced 
the author as a mere public amuser, despite his 
apparent efforts to inculcate morality from the stage 
by ridiculing vice. In April, 1905, M. Lavedan 



348 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

scored another great triumph by his " Duel," staged 
at the Comddie Fran9aise. It is one of his best- 
written and certainly his most successful play. The 
duel is between two brothers, one a doctor, the other 
a priest, who both love the Duchesse de Chailles, 
whose husband is dying in a private asylum kept 
by the medical man. The duke dies and the duchess 
goes to the doctor, the priest having, naturally, to 
eschew carnal love or to leave his calling. The 
curious thing about the play was that it was a 
demonstration in favour of God. Every time the 
word '' Dieu" was pronounced in the play, all the 
fashionable people at the Theatre FranQais clapped 
their gloved hands. It was decidedly a manifestation 
for the Deity and against the anti-clerical Govern- 
ment. It was also curious to see M. Le Bargy, 
the jeune premier of the house, the successor of 
Delaunay, the Beau Brummel of the French stage who 
sets fashions in cravats and ties, as the Abbe Daniel. 

Other remarkable dramatists whom I call to mind 
as having emerged from '' chez Antoine" are M. 
Frangois de Curel, M. Maurice Donnay, M. Georges 
Courteline, and M. Eugene Brieux. I remember 
when M. Brieux was a hard-working, ordinary 
journalist, just as was that other extremely suc- 
cessful man, M. Alfred Capus. These two gentle- 
men, instead of spending their nights in stuffy 
newspaper offices as they did of old, have now 
their own comfortable homes in Paris and in the 
provinces. M. Capus spends most of his time in 
his country house, about fifty miles from town, and 
M. Brieux does his work durinsf the winter on the 
sunny shores of the Bay of Antibes, close to Nice. 




Photo] 



Alfred Capus. 



[Gerschel 



To face p. 349. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 349 

M. Brieux has caused more commotion by his 
*' Avaries " than by any of his other plays. This 
strange study of lock-hospital subjects shocked the 
French dramatic censors, and they refused to allow 
the first performance to take place. The author 
then carried it to Belgium, and had it staged suc- 
cessfully at Liege. In February, 1905, it was 
allowed a footing in Paris, and was brought out at 
Antoine's. M. Brieux had many harsh critics, but 
the play was well received by a crowd of curiosity- 
mongers. Most of the spectators knew the work 
by heai for it had long been discounted owing to 
the performances in Belgium. M. Brieux is an 
overwhelmingly serious dramatist, and his gloomy 
picture of the diseased man who refuses to follow 
the advice of the doctor, and insists on marrying 
a young lady with money which he wants, is the 
most fearful of his medico-social sermons from the 
stage. He is held to have had hints from Ibsen's 
"Ghosts." 

It is a relief to turn fron: him to M. Capus or ot 
M. Courteline. M. Capus is never dull and his 
" Capusisms " are sometimes as good as " Shavisms." 
His years of struggle as a hard-working, under-paid 
journalist have not embittered him. Neither has he 
been affected by the failure of the three or four novels 
written by him before his successes on the stage. 
Here is a man who was educated at the Polytechnic 
School with a view to his being a State engineer. He 
does not become an engineer, but a journalist, one of 
his first contributions to the Press being an obituary 
notice of Charles Darwin. We next find him writing 
all sorts of things for the Gaulois, notably jokes and 



350 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

" nouvelles a la main.'' Then one fine day we wake 
up in Paris, and Capus also wakes up, to find that his 
play " La Veine " has been a thundering triumph. 
This was compensation for the novels, which fell flat. 
Capus was well consoled by the success of " La 
Veine," for he had taken it from one of his ill-fated 
novels "Qui perd Gagne." 

To look at M. Capus one would never suppose that 
he worked hard. He strolls along the boulevards, 
eye-glass in eye, dark in features — for he is a 
Southerner — amiable, easy-going, ddbonnaire. Yet he 
is one of the most laborious of men, and no sooner is 
one play finished than he is busily constructing another. 
How long the " Veine " will last is a problem. He 
seems destined to go on for years as Scribe did before 
him, and as Sardou is doing in his time. 

Georges Courteline, the Moliere of the Grand Caf6, 
formerly of the Cafe Napolitain, where he was wont 
to foregather with his friends at the absinthe hour, is 
also an easy-going, affable humourist who seems to 
take life lightly. He jumped into fame by his " Client 
Serieux," in which the barrister BarbemoUe pleads for 
a client named Lagoupille, and proves that he was a 
most honest man, even though he has been several 
times in prison. In the course of the case BarbemoUe 
receives notice that he has been appointed to take the 
place of the judge or magistrate before whom he 
pleads. He accordingly turns on his client and repre- 
sents him to be a scoundrel of the inkiest description. 
M. Courteline herein tried to show that lawyers lacked 
conscience, and he made the bourgeoisie laugh. It 
was this one-act play of Courteline's that not only 
made him famous, but started the small theatres which 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 351 

now abound in Paris. No sooner had the ** Client " 
taken root as a play which everybody had to see than 
the author emptied his bag of reserves, and presented 
" Theodore Cherche des Allumettes," " Hortense 
Couche-toi," " Lidoire/' and finally " Boubouroche," 
also a great hit. Another remarkable one-act play of 
Courteline's is the " Paix du Manage," some scenes of 
which have been seriously declared worthy of the 
author of " Les Femmes Savantes." In this playlet 
a novelist, Trielle, is married to a shrew. She makes 
his life a burden, so he hits on the expedient of curtail- 
ing her monthly allowance by fines inflicted for her 
scoldings. Thus at the end of the month he reads 
such inscriptions in his book of fines as " Plus, du 
vingt-cinquieme pour m'avoir traite, de mufle, 2 francs 
75 cents." ** Plus, du vingt - sixieme, pour avoir 
rep^t^ a plusieurs reprises que mes romans n'ont pas 
le sens commun (ce qui n'est que trop reel), 12 francs 
50 cents." The wife is furious and threatens to throw 
herself into the street, so he opens the window for her 
and goes on registering fines. The shrew conquers 
him in the end and he has to pay. 

After the fun of M. Courteline it is not easy to 
appreciate the more serious playwrights, such as M. 
Paul Hervieu, for instance. So much has been written 
about M. Hervieu that it is needless to refer to him at 
great length here. He is the rigid logician of drama, 
as in " Le Dedale," which gives him a far higher place 
than that held of old by the younger Dumas ; for 
he goes down more deeply into the emotions, and, 
as a French favourable critic said, " atteignant parfois 
I'humanite, ou plutot la maternite, aux entrailles, la 
pensee en ses profondeurs." Naturally ; for the scenes 



352 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

in the " D^dale " between Marianne de Pogis and her 
divorced husband, when they meet by the bedside of 
their ailing child, are of a nature to make women weep 
and to agitate strong men who happen to be married 
and fathers of children. The weak part of the great 
play is the melodramatic ending of Max de Pogis and 
his rival in the affections of his wife, Guillaume 
le Breuil. 

M. Paul Hervieu has been a very lucky man 
socially and professionally. He was born with a 
golden spoon in his mouth, and all his plays, " Les 
Tenailles," "la Loi de I'Homme,*' "La Course du 
Flambeau," " L'enigme," and " Le Dedale," were 
both favourably received by the critics and the first- 
nighters, and successful. The "Dedale" and the 
" Course du Flambeau " made a great impression on 
me when I went to see them, although I tried to steel 
myself a gainst emotion. The "Course du Flambeau" 
is less emotional than the other play, but it also grips 
your attention by its poignancy, and you forget that 
a lot of it is forced and far-fetched. The dramatist 
takes his title from Lucretius on the torch-race of the 
successive generations, one sacrificing itself to the 
other. There is a consumptive girl, daughter of a 
widow, Madame Revel. For the widow an American 
named Stangy is dying. He wants to marry her, but 
she has to think of her daughter. The latter on her 
side wants to marry a youth, Didier, and gets him. 
Then there are money troubles, and Madame Didier's 
grandmother is sacrificed for the family. Madame 
Didier is ordered to the Engadine, but the grand- 
mother will not advance money unless she goes too. 
The Engadine is not for her, as she has heart disease, 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 353 

but she is not told of the danger. She dies in the En- 
gadine, and Madame Revel cries, ''Pour sauver ma 
fillefaitudinamerey The "Course du Flambeau" 
was saluted with enthusiasm by the critics. Nothing so 
true and terrible had been given to the stage since 
Henry Becque's play " Les Corbeaux," the strife of 
lawyers over a succession or estate. Becque was the 
precursor of the whole of the young school of drama- 
tists. He taught them their trade by his " Parisienne," 
played in February, 1885. I remember the man well, 
a gloomy, cynical person, sometimes to be met in the 
boulevard cafes laying down the law on the drama. But 
he was more frequently in his study writing. Becque 
had reason to be morose, gloomy, and melancholy. 
He was poor and fell into debt in bringing out his first 
play, " Michel Pauper." After a lot of trouble Perrin 
was induced to stage " Les Corbeaux," in September 
1882, at the Comedie Fran^aise. Everybody of 
experience knew that the play was of what is termed 
the "epoch-making" order, but it did not "give 
satisfaction " to the subscribers, so Perrin had to with- 
draw it, and Becque had to struggle on in poverty. 
He succeeded in dethroning Dumas yf/y who had been 
master of the stage for thirty years, and who had marked 
a progress on Scribe, inasmuch as he put truth above 
intrigue or plot. Before he died Becque had mapped 
out the skeleton of a play which he hoped would 
be his masterpiece. It was to be called the " Monde 
d'argent," that is to say the Bourse, of which he knew 
something, for he had been an unsuccessful stock- 
jobber for nearly eleven years. Dumas had also done 
something similar in his " Question d'Argent," dating 
from 1857. It is in the "Question d'Argent" that 

24 



354 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

business is described as " other people's money," ** les 
affaires cest V argent des autres'' Both Dumas and 
Becque have been imitated by M. Octave Mirbeau in 
" Les Affaires sont les Affaires," a modern presentment 
of the moneyed magnate. 

M. Mirbeau has been luckier than Becque, for 
he has made money. His play " Les Affaires," with 
its central character, Isidore Lechat, the brutal, 
hustling millionaire, who is stricken by the death of 
his son, was a splendid success. 

Playwrights in France being as numerous as black- 
berries in the season, I cannot attempt to deal with 
them all. Two I must mention, as they were among 
those who impressed me of late years. M. Marcel 
Provost made a great hit in '* Le Plus Faible " at 
the Com6die Fran^aise, thanks chiefly to M. de 
F^raudy's acting. The subject of the play is thread- 
bare — a struggle between passion and prejudices. 
There is incidental preaching or a moral, to the effect 
that free unions between clever people, however 
elaborately organised, are liable to become failures 
sooner than orthodox marriages. M. Marcel Prevost 
is a man who holds his own very ably as a dramatist 
and novelist, although his enemies accuse him of 
being an imitator of Georges Ohnet, and even bad 
at that, and also brand him as a notable commergant 
of letters who knows how to sell his books. 

I must also find place to mention M. Maurice 
Donnay, who tickled Paris by his " Retour de Jeru- 
salem," an elopement play of anti-Semitic cast. 
One of the Jews introduced was a caricature of Dr. 
Max Nordau the writer and Zionist, but who does 
not go to live in Jerusalem, manifestly preferring 




Edmond Rostand. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 355 

Paris, which he has made his home, as also did his 
greater co-religionist Heine. Max Nordau was irate 
especially as M. Donnay represented him as being a 
sort of Mr. Snevellicci as regards women. After all 
the doctor was being paid rather in his own coin 
for he has written stinging things about Parisian 
dramatists and poets. 

M. Edmond Rostand's plays I went to see through 
sheer curiosity. He was advertised by M. Coquelin 
who is said to have declared that there was nobody 
since Shakespeare who was both poet and homme de 
theatre at the same time except Rostand. It was 
M. Coquelin who showed the way to the dramatist 
in the elaboration of " Cyrano de Bergerac," by indi- 
cating an old vaudeville " Roquelaure ou I'homme, 
le plus laid de France," presented at the Gatt6 in 
1836. And M. Rostand applied his too facile system 
of versification to the subject with a talent which won 
for him the applause of the bourgeoisie. Anyway he 
gained fame, glory, and additional fortune, for he was 
born rich, by "Cyrano" and the "Aiglon." He has 
had to pay something, however, for his glory and 
celebrity in two continents. If he had interested or 
enthusiastic eulogists, such as M. Catulle Mendes, 
for instance, who said, " Fortunate the century which 
began with Victor Hugo and ended with Edmond 
Rostand," there are also numerous detractors, such 
as M. Hauser, who wrote that the Academy disgraced 
itself by electing M. Rostand as an ** Immortal." This 
election was also denounced by a literary man who 
lectures to students in the Latin quarter, and who 
declared that M. Rostand was a dramatist in the same 
way that Paul de Kock was a novelist. Poor Paul 



356 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

de Kock ! He is always falling In for hard knocks, 
although he succeeded In enlivening his generation 
by a process of his own. M. Baragnon, the lecturer, 
further asserted that if M. Rostand had some knack 
as a versifier, he was a revivalist of Gongorism, and 
a Trissotiuy no poet. 

Then there was the charge of plagiarism brought 
against M. Rostand by Mr. Gross of Chicago, who 
claims that "Cyrano" was cribbed from his play, "The 
Merchant Prince of Corneville." The French com- 
mentators on this event simply directed the attention 
of Mr. Gross of Chicago to the old vaudeville of 
"Roquelaure" already alluded to, and labelled him as a 
plagiarist too. There were even four old plays about 
this ugliest man in France, Roquelaure. M. Rostand 
borrowed from the play by Messrs. de Leuven, de 
Livry, and Lherie, and borrowed largely too. Cyrano 
is the Due de Roquelaure, Christian is Captain de 
Candal, and Roxane Is Helene de Solanges of the play 
by the three dramatists first named. M. Rostand 
finely embroidered the theme of the older dramatists. 
It is doubtful if they could have ever produced those 
lines of the cadets of Gascony, which breathe the 
spirit of the old French swashbucklers and black- 



guards- 



" Ce sont les cadets de Gascogne 
De Carbon de Castel-Jaloux : 
Bretteurs et menteurs sans vergogne 
Ce sont les cadets de Gascogne ! 
Parlant blason, lambel, bastogne 
Tous plus nobles que des iilous, 
Ce sont les cadets de Gascogne 
De Carbon de Castel-Jaloux." 

In the matter of French poetry I am beset at 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 357 

the beginning by one preponderating name, that of 
Victor Hugo. I have read through nearly all his 
work, and admire much of it. I have seen him many 
times, in the Senate, on the tops of 'buses, in the 
streets, and I remember that famous occasion on 
which he went about in a lustrous tall hat. The 
article had been purchased by the poet at the time 
when he thought that he would be elected President of 
the Republic. He was beaten by Jules Gr6vy, the 
hat was put in a bandbox, and Victor Hugo went on 
turning out good and bad verse, sometimes too facile 
and factitious, sometimes strong and splendid. He 
has been called all sorts of names, such as the 
journalist of poetry, the Goncourt of poetry, "half 
genius, half charlatan," according to Amiel, and 
** more craftsman than artist " according to Renouvier. 
Mr. Swinburne, on the other hand, made an idol of 
him, as the French '' Hugoldtres'" have done. Any- 
how, some of him is immortal. 

Victor Hugo wrote admirably in prose as well as 
in verse, but he never composed anything so power- 
ful, so poignant, and so terrible as those prose passages 
from the undoubted poet Lamartine quoted by 
M. Emile Ollivier in the eleventh volume of his 
" Empire Liberal." Writes the author of the 
"Meditations Poetiques," in his lamentation, "Job 
lu dans le desert : " 

"Tout pese, tout balance, tout calcuM, tout pens6 
et repens^ en dernier r^sultat, la vie humaine — si on 
soustrait Dieu, c'est a dire I'infini — est le supplice le 
plus divinement ou le plus infernalement combine 
pour faire rendre, dans un espace de temps donne, 
a une creature pensante la plus grande masse de 



358 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

souffrances physiques ou morales, de gemissements, 
de desespoir, de cris, d'imprecations, de blasphemes, 
qui puissent etre contenus dans un corps de chair et 
dans une ame de . . . nous ne savous pas meme le nom 
de cette essence par qui nous sommes ! Jamais un 
homme, quelque cruel qu'on le suppose, n'aurait pu 
arriver a cette infernale et sublime combinaison de 
supplice ; il a fallu un Dieu pour I'inventer. . . . Y a-t-il 
quelque chose de plus monstreux que d'appeler a la vie 
— et quelle vie ! — etde reveillerdela mort non sentie pour 
remourir dans les tortures d'une seconde mort sentie, 
un etre qui ne demandait ni ce bienfait, ni ce supplice, 
et qui dormait de son sommeil de neant, comme dit 
Job ? . . . Et que dire des conditions de la vie 
physique? La mort nourissant la vie, la vie nouris- 
sant la mort." The poet touches next, as Tennyson 
does in " Maud," on the incessant war carried on 
through the domain of creation. And the end of it 
all : '' Nous vivons tres peu de temps, aucun temps 
meme, si nous comparons ce clignement d'oeil appel^ 
une vie a I'incommensurable dur^e des ^ternites sans 
premier et sans dernier jour. A quoi bon tenir a 
quelque chose quand tout va vous etre arrache a la 
fois. Encore si le jour et I'heure de cette mort etaient 
connus et fix^s d'avance, quelque courte que fut la vie, 
ou pourrait regler ses pensees sur son horizon. Mais 
non, tout est acheve dans cette invention de la mort. 
Mais I'imprevu de la mort, ce n'est rien encore, non 
rien en comparaison de I'inconnu du s^pulcre. Ou 
allons-nous? allons-nous meme quelque part par ce 
tenebreux chemin ? " 

As M. Ollivier remarks, no writer in any language 
has ever penned passages of such terrible pathos. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 359 

And yet Lamartine was no pessimist, such as Baude- 
laire, the sombre author of the " Fleurs de Mai." 
Somebody must yet arise to penetrate the secret of 
this terrible passage. Was it on account of Elvire, 
who died of consumption ? It was in Savoy that she 
met the poet in 1 8 1 6. 

" O lac ! L'annee a peine a fini sa carriere 
Et pres des flots cheris qu'elle devait revoir, 
Regarde ! je viens seul m'asseoir sur cette pierre 

Ou tu la vis s'asseoir. 
Que le vent qui gemit, le roseau qui soupire, 
Que les parfums legers de ton air embaume, 
Que tout ce qu'on entend, I'on voit et I'on respire 

Tout dise : lis ont aime." 

Elvire was a Creole orphan brought up in the house 
of the Legion of Honour at Saint Denis. She 
married one of the teachers there, an elderly man, 
and died in Paris in 181.7. Graziella, daughter of a 
Neapolitan fisherman, had previously died of love for 
the French poet. 

Baudelaire, to whom I have referred, has uttered 
in poetry some of the terrible truths enunciated by 
Lamartine in the prose passage just quoted : 

" O douleur ! O douleur ! Le Temps mange la vie 
Et I'obscur Ennemi qui nous ronge le coeur 
Du sang que nous pardons croit et se fortifie." 

And the fearful pessimism in '* Une Charogne." His 
mistress is to become carrion, too : 

" Et pourtant vous serez semblable a cette ordure, 
A cette horrible infection 
Etoile de mes yeux, soleil de ma nature, 
Vous, mon ange et ma passion," 



360 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

I never had leisure to follow the movements of the 
modern Decadents and Symbolists in poetry, and I 
have not read a line of Mallarm^. I have read 
Verlaine, who did not want to be called a Symbolist, 
but was one, since he endeavoured to produce emotions 
by sound, as in the opening of the " Crimen Amoris," 

"Dans un palais sole et or, dans Ecbatane," 

which M. Morice has compared to the crash of a brass 
band. Verlaine at his best does not equal old Villon, 
to whom he is often compared. He could never have 
written such a gem as the " Ballade des Dames du 
temps jadis" — the " Ballad of Dead Ladies" — so finely 
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, with the 
familiar refrain " Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan," or 
the " Ballade de la belle Heaulmiere," both in the 
"Grand Testament" of Maistre Frangois Villon. 
The two men, Villon and Verlaine, were equal in 
this, that they tried to practise their religion before 
they died. Says Villon : 

" Je suys pecheur, je le s^ay bien ; 
Pourtant Dieu ne veult pas ma mort, 
Mais convertisse et vive en bien." 

The nineteenth century Villon, on his side, died a good 
Catholic. Verlaine I used to see at one time engaged 
in his favourite pastime of drinking, sometimes 
absinthe and sometimes rum, in a cafe in the Latin 
Quarter. He was a contemporary of another remark- 
able poet, Georges Rodenbach, the Belgian, author 
of " Bruges-la-morte." 

Rodenbach was not, of course, the Bohemian that 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 361 

Verlaine was. He was a domesticated married man, 
and besides producing that admirable verse of his, 
descriptive chiefly of his native country, and especially 
of Bruges, he wrote for the leading newspapers. 
There was one poet or versifier in Paris whom I read 
very regularly, Raoul Ponchon. I have referred to 
Ponchon already, and to his mock elegy on the death 
of poor Chincholle of the Figaro. He writes a 
"Gazette rimee" every week for Le Journal ^ and 
contributes comic verse also to the Courrier Frangais. 
He is an imitator, but thoroughly modern, of Villon, 
and although many do not deign to notice his work, 
it is the most quaint and curious " copy " ever printed. 
One of the finest things he ever wrote was on the 
dissensions between Queen Wilhelmina of Holland 
and her husband : 



" Or, cet infortune prince 
Disait : Mince ! 
Sur terre, est-il pire sort 
Titre plus aleatoire 

Illusoire 
Qu celui-la de consort. 

Quand j'epousai cette hermine, 

Wilhelmine, 
Pouvais-je done, moi, Gotha, 
Prevoir que ce mariage 
Deviendrait mon Golgotha ? 

En mon for, je pensais faire 

Une affaire 
Comme on dit — de tout repos. 
A payer sur Sa cassette 

Quelque dette 
Je me sentais tout dispos. 



362 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

II me fallait en rebattre 

Apres quatre 
Ou cinq mois de fol espoir, 
Car la Reine, quoique riche, 

Est tres chiche 
EUe ne veut rien savoir 

Non seulement de mes dettes, 

Mes emplettes, 
Mais, je le dis tout a trac 
De cette femme inhumaine 

C'est a peine 
Si j'en ai pour mon tabac." 

These are only a few excerpts from a long gazette 
rim^e, which, with the equally queer and quaint lines 
on Madame Humbert's empty safe, is among the best 
of the ephemeral compositions in verse thrown off by 
the prolific Ponchon, who taps a fountain of fun which 
is never dry. 



CHAPTER XXV 

Return to politics after literature — President Loubet's retire- 
ment — His new home — His successor, M. Armand 
Fallieres — A Republic of Lawyers — Close of the Dreyfus 
Case — M. Clemenceau, President of the Council, and 
General Picquart, War Minister — General de Galliffet on 
Picquart's rise — General Andre and his revelations — 
The mysteries of modern Paris — Farewell to Paris. 

IN the late autumn of 1905 there was a good 
deal of talk about the impending resignation of 
President Loubet. Conflicts of opinion arose on the 
matter, and there were many who held that the 
astute President was only hoaxing those to whom he 
declared that he was tired of office. The opposition 
papers called M. Loubet a crafty old " bonhomme," 
and he was compared to Jules Grevy, who clung to 
the Elysee until he had to leave it. M. Loubet was 
in earnest despite his detractors' doubts and denuncia- 
tions. He had had enough of the cares and troubles 
of his high official position, and he was worried by 
the Church and State question and by home politics. 
Accordingly, he went back to his old district near 
the Palais de Justice and the Luxembourg. He did 
not take a flat in his old street near the Senate, but 
in the Rue Dante, close to the College of France. 
The street is by no means fashionable, and it seemed 

363 



364 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

to many a shabby neighbourhood for one who had 
been President of the Republic and on a par with 
monarchs. It is near some of the vilest slums in 
Paris, but M. Loubet did not seem to mind. He 
finds himself just as comfortable, no doubt, in his large 
flat in a mean street as if he were in the Champs 
Elysdes or the Faubourg Saint Germain. Then, 
M. Loubet is a lawyer, and lawyers have a pre- 
dilection for the district near the Palais de Justice. 
It was on the i8th of February, 1906, that 
M. Loubet left the Elys^e, after his seven years' 
tenure of office. His removal to the Rue Dante 
caused me to remember the flight of time. It seemed 
to me that only a few years had elapsed since I had 
seen M. Loubet, newly-elected, attending the funeral 
of his predecessor, Felix Faure, who died so mys- 
teriously on the 1 6th of February, 1899. I also 
remembered the Exhibition of 1900, which I saw 
opened by M. Loubet after he had been a little over 
a year in office, and my mind likewise reverted to the 
other Exhibition which I saw opened by President 
Carnot. I also went back in memory to the time 
when M. Gr6vy was at the Elysee, and when it 
seemed as if he were as much a fixture there as any 
monarch on his throne. In the course of less than 
thirty years I had seen no fewer than seven Presidents 
of the Republic — MacMahon, Grevy, Carnot, Casimir- 
Perier, Faure, Loubet, Fallieres. M. Armand 
Fallieres was elected President on the 17th of 
January, 1906. Here was another lawyer promoted 
to the chief magistracy of the State. The Third 
Republic will undoubtedly be known in history as 
the Republic of the Lawyers. It was founded by 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 365 

lawyers, Leon Gambetta at their head, and it has 
been mainly ruled by barristers and by journalists 
who were also barristers. Arms have had to yield 
to the toga in France ever since the downfall of 
the Bonapartes, and so it v/ill go on until an 
upheaval comes, when the military element may 
preponderate once more. This is, however, a long 
way off, for the very continuance of the Republic 
shows that the French nation has come to regard it 
as a safe system of government, good for peace and 
good accordingly for commerce. The lawyers have 
done that much at least for France. They have 
staved off war and ensured a long era of peace, 
however tangled and tortuous may be the internal 
condition of the country through party politics and 
the unnecessary struggle with the Church.' 

M. Fallieres, the lawyer, is exactly of the same 
stamp, socially as well as professionally, as his pre- 
decessors. Like M. Loubet, he is a Southerner of 
humble extraction. His father and grandfather were 
simple countrymen, living in a small way at Mezin, 
in the Lot-et-Garonne. The grandfather was a 
blacksmith and the father a greffier or registrar 
in a courthouse. Both M. Fallieres and his relative, 
who became Bishop of Saint Brieuc, in Brittany, 
were originally educated by the priests in a pdtit 
seminaire. One went on for sacerdotal orders, the 
other marched to the conquest of Paris, and becoming 

^ I hold to the phrase " unnecessary struggle with the 
Church." Far-seeing RepubHcans, true statesmen, would have 
succeeded in Erastianising an aggressive or meddlesome Church 
without displaying all the anti-clerical venom characteristic of 
prominent French politicians during the past thirty years. 



366 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

a politician as well as a lawyer, has succeeded beyond 
his expectations. 

It was entertaining to note how the opposition and 
their Press, and also some of the Republicans, treated 
the new President. They raked up everything about 
him, and made a great point of the fact that he had 
been practically a charity boy in his native place, 
receiving the first rudiments of education from eccle- 
siastics. Those who were supposed to have some 
chance of election, notably M. Paul Doumer and 
M. Rouvier, were attacked before the voting took 
place at Versailles resulting in the selection of 
M. Fallieres. It was discovered, for instance, that 
M. Doumer was born in a hovel at Aurillac, that 
his father was a railway navvy promoted ganger or 
foreman, and earning two francs fifty a day. It was 
also found out that M. Doumer when a little boy 
was cross and peevish, and that he used to expec- 
torate in the face of his nurse. He went on also to 
the conquest of Paris, and did fairly well, exchanging 
his profession as a schoolmaster for that of a politician 
and journalist, subsequently holding a portfolio as 
Minister of Finance in the Bourgeois Cabinet of 
1895. 

As to M. Maurice Rouvier, who was a vague 
candidate for the Presidency, he was attacked hotly 
by Henri Rochefort, who reminded him of his 
adventures in the Palais Royal. M. Emile Combes 
had announced in December, 1905, that he was not a 
candidate for the Presidency, and that he would 
vote for M. Fallieres. Hardly had M. Fallieres 
taken up his post at the Elysde when the first 
great event of the year happened — the entry of 




photo] 



MaITKE DliMANGE 



[ Gerschel 



Tnfiiccp. 367. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 367 

M. Clemenceau, the great Cabinet-smasher of old, 
into the Sarrien combination, as Minister of the 
Interior. The second great event was the formation 
of a Cabinet by this very M. Clemenceau in October, 
1906. He becomes President of the Council and 
Minister of the Interior, and selects General Picquart 
as his War Minister, M. Pichon, who was Minister 
at Pekin during the Boxer outbreak, succeeding 
M. Bourgeois at the Quai d'Orsay. 

In the meantime the Dreyfus affair was finished, 
after having caused an uproar and an agitation 
unprecedented in the history of any country. " Le 
trait caracteristique de I'affaire," said a writer in the 
Temps y *' c'est d'avoir cree des divisions intestines 
dans toutes les classes de la society dans tous les 
groupements et dans toutes les families." The 
second revision was effected, and Dreyfus was 
proclaimed innocent by the Court of Cassation on 
the 1 2th of July, 1906. The court ruled as follows : 
** En derniere analyse de I'accusation portee contre 
Dreyfus rien ne reste debout. . . . II ne reste rien 
qui puisse k sa charge etre qualifie crime ou delit." 
There was no applause in court when President 
Ballot- Beaupre read out the finding. Everything 
passed off in solemnity and silence. Those whom 
I saw present on the occasion were Maitre Demange, 
the advocate of M. Dreyfus on the first court-martial ; 
Maitre Mornard, who represented M. Dreyfus at the 
Supreme Court ; Madame Zola, M. Joseph Reinach, 
the Hadamard family. Colonel Picquart, not yet pro- 
moted to his present rank, and M. Mathieu Dreyfus. 
M. Alfred Dreyfus was not there, but his son and 
daughter were. Almost immediately after the scene 



368 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

in the Court of Cassation the Government was called 
upon to nominate M. Dreyfus to the Legion of 
Honour and to give reparation to Colonel Picquart. 
In the Chamber of Deputies a member proposed the 
interment of Emile Zola in the Panthdon, and in 
the Senate it was resolved to have the busts of 
M. Scheurer-Kestner and M. Gabriel Trarieux, the 
earliest champions of M. Dreyfus, in the gallery of 
the House just outside the *' Salle des Seances." 

The decree of the Court of Cassation and the 
reparation proposed excited, as was only to be 
expected, the anger of the anti-Dreyfusards. They 
pointed out with all the vigour at their command 
that the affaire was by no means finished, and 
maintained that Dreyfus was still guilty. His 
"rehabilitation" was "a Talmudic triumph," a coup 
dHat juif. "■ We know," wrote M. Leon Daudet 
in M. Drumont's paper, " from the testimony of 
General Mercier and some others that there was 
a war alarm at a certain epoch over Dreyfus. If 
Dreyfus had been innocent as regards the Eastern 
frontier, if he had no relations with Germany, why 
did she show her teeth? It is certain that M. Casimir- 
Perier was wrong in allowing the German Ambassador 
to have a threatening conversation with him, and he 
ought to have referred him to the Foreign Minister. 
It is certain that M. Casimir Perier resigned as a 
mark of deference and submission to William the 
Second. The scene between the German Ambassador 
and the President of the Republic and the latter's 
resignation are inexplicable supposing Dreyfus to 
be innocent. If his guilt be admitted, they are simple 
and tragic. A complicated treason such as that, 




Agence] 



General Picquart. 



[Photo — Nouvelle 



To face p. 369. 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 369 

covered designedly by forgeries and contradictory 
evidence, cannot be unravelled by live, material 
proofs, after so many years and after so many 
opportune disappearances." And, to cap all, that 
remarkable man Esterhazy, seen in London by a 
French journalist, declared that the Dreyfus case 
was not finished, and that Dreyfus showed the white 
feather twice ; once in accepting pardon in 1899, 
and the second time in allowing his counsel to ask 
for cassation sans renvoi. " If he had any confidence 
in his case," added Esterhazy, " he would have asked 
to go before another court-martial." 

In spite of all the barking, the affaire is settled, 
and Captain Dreyfus was promoted Major. Colonel 
Picquart was not only promoted but was made War 
Minister. He at least has fewer enemies than the 
man whose cause he championed, and there are 
comparatively few who will cavil at his honours. 
Any one who knows the man cannot but like him. 

I first saw him as he gave evidence at Zola's trial 
in the Palais de Justice, and he impressed me 
favourably. He is a fine type of a soldier and a 
man. General the Marquis de Galliffet, under whose 
orders Picquart once served, had a high opinion of 
the man always, but he cannot imagine him as a 
War Minister. Said the facetious General, when he 
heard that his old officer was in the Cabinet : 
*' Picquart ministre, 9a valait la peine de voir cela. 

II y a des choses qui consolent vraiment de ne 
pouvoir se decider a mourir. Picquart ministre de 
la guerre ! Curieux, extremement bizarre, vraiment." 
General de Galliffet has described Picquart as calm, 
modest, studious, cultured but obstinate. He is an 

25 



370 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

artist, a poet, a musician. He used to fall into 
ecstasies over fine landscapes, and especially over 
clouded distances. He saw something in these 
distances which, being no artist, General de Galliffet 
could not see. As to the idea that Picquart took 
up the Dreyfus case through interest. General de 
Galliffet laughs at it. Picquart went into it through 
sheer obstinacy, stubbornness. Nor was he a friend 
of the Jews. As an instance of this, the Marquis 
de Galliffet relates that when the War Minister 
asked him to take M. Joseph Reinach, who is in the 
territorial army, on his staff at the manoeuvres, 
Picquart was furious. " I can't stand the Jew," 
said Picquart. " Try to," said General Galliffet. 
** Be more gracious towards the stout chap, /e gros, 
for he is a friend of the Minister's." And Picquart 
not only took the hint, but he was, with M. Reinach, 
the stout chap, one of the chief organisers of the 
agitation over the affaire. And in spite of the 
facetiousness of his former commander, there is 
every prospect that he will make an efficient Minister 
if he can remain long enough at the post. He is not 
only an able, but an ornamental general. Boulanger 
was ornamental but not able ; and it is strange to 
note that he, too, was first brought into public and 
political life by no less a person than M. Clemenceau, 
who now has General Picquart as his War Minister. 
The new head of the French War Department follows 
two civilians — M. Berteaux and M. Etienne. His 
last military predecessor was the one and only 
General Andre, who was with M. Waldeck- Rousseau 
and afterwards with M. Emile Combes. He was 
taken into the Waldeck- Rousseau Cabinet when 
General the Marquis de Galliffet resigned. Any one 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 371 

who has seen General Andre once will never forget 
him. A tall, lanky man, with a thin, tapering face 
and a long nose, he would do admirably on the stage 
as the Knight of La Mancha or as Cyrano de 
Bergerac. An able man withal, although not a 
politician. His Memoirs, printed in the Matin, 
formed the most diverting reading ever published 
in that enterprising newspaper. Whether the General 
wrote them himself or not, they bear his hall-mark ; 
and while they were appearing in serial form, just like 
a story, everybody was wondering how far the former 
Minister would go with his revelations, which were 
entitled "Cinq Ans de Ministere." The case was 
unique. I know of no other instance of a French 
Minister revealing the secrets of office in that way. 
As a rule, those who have been Ministers are as 
reticent and as reserved as those actually in office. 
They may occasionally unbend to their friends in 
private, but they do not write for the newspapers. 
General Andre thought fit to break through the 
reticence, and sent his Memoirs to press almost 
as soon as he was out of the Cabinet. He certainly 
entertained a good many readers of the Matin, but 
he was soundly rated by some of his former col- 
leagues. His resuscitation in print, after his retire- 
ment from the Cabinet, caused a continuation of the 
attacks made on him by opposition writers, who went 
on calling him bad names, as they did when he was 
involved in the affair of the '' fiches " or private 
information sheets relative to officers who were 
supposed to be Clericals. It was, in fact, a pity to 
see a man of General Andre's age, and one, too, who 
has had a distinguished record as a soldier, drawing 
attacks on himself by his own doings. His recol- 



372 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

lections, although they formed rather racy reading 
in the beginning, lost interest later, and the con- 
cluding chapters published were commonplace. 
I believe that the uproar caused by the initial 
chapters led to a toning down of the others. One 
of the best bits in the reminiscences is that relating 
to General Brugere, a most distinguished soldier who, 
after having escaped shot and shell in the Franco- 
German and other campaigns, was once wounded in 
an awkward place while out shooting with President 
Carnot, to whose household he was attached. 
M. Carnot was a notoriously bad shot, unlike his 
predecessors and successors, but he had to take 
down a gun periodically for the Presidential shooting- 
parties at Marly or Rambouillet. It was during one of 
these official " chasses " that General Brugere was 
awkwardly hit in the lower part of the back. General 
Andre's note on General Brugere in the " Cinq Ans 
de Ministere " refers to the succession of General 
Saussier, long Military Governor of Paris, and a great 
friend of the late Duke of Cambridge, whom he 
resembled in some respects. When Brugere was 
appointed Vice-President of the Higher Council of 
War he was Military Governor of Paris, the two 
offices having been held before him by General 
Saussier. He was in command of 50,000 men, 
and lived in the fine suite of rooms in the 
Hotel des Invalides, once inhabited by King Jerome 
Napoleon and his family. " When I told Brugere," 
writes Andr^, " that the Government was opposed 
to the continuation of the sort of Grand Constableship 
with which Saussier had been invested, he evinced 
the deepest dissatisfaction, and his vexation found 
vent in most violent words which, fortunately, I alone 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 373 

heard, and our old comradeship made me as soon 
forget He would not give in then, and I have 
a notion that he was ready to leave the highest office 
in the army in order to remain Governor of Paris and 
occupant of the fine rooms in the Hotel des Invalides. 
To cut short his probable appeals and his recrimi- 
nations, I hastened to give him a successor. On 
my proposal the Government nominated General 
Florentin to the military governorship of Paris. 
Florentin is the finest military type that I know. 
His straightforwardness and his dignity are models 
for all. A modest soldier, severely wounded in 1870, 
of open intelligence, he ignores politics and does not 
want to know anything about them, but he has a clear 
conception of his duty, and he does it faithfully. 
During the crisis he was the only one to whom it was 
possible to talk about Dreyfus, about Henry, the 
Comte de Mun, Jaures, and Picquart, without voices 
being lifted high and some rude aphorism being 
emitted to close the discussion arbitrarily and 
brutally. During the funeral of Felix Faure, 
General Florentin, although silent, played a leading 
part." Here, you see, we have a most entertaining, 
and, at the same time, a most instructive fragment 
of General Andre s reminiscences. The entertaining 
part is at the expense of General Brugere, a colleague 
whom he professes to hold in high esteem, but whom 
he gives away. Brugere, we are told later, made up 
his mind to keep only the Vice-Presidency of the 
Higher Council of War, but he was five months 
engaged in removing from the luxurious and historic 
rooms in the H6tel des Invalides, and during that 
time his successor as Military Governor of Paris had 
to remain in lodgings. You have another enter- 



374 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

taining bit in the revelation that General Florentin 
ignores politics and seems to glory in his ignorance. 
This certainly is not the case with M. Andr4 who 
was the most political of War Ministers — although 
no politician — and had a run of five years at it. And 
not only that, but he has come out as a journalistic 
soldier since his contributions to the Matin appeared. 
The instructive bit of the revelations is in reference 
to General Florentin's rSle on the day of Fdlix 
Faure's funeral, when Paul D^roulede wanted 
General Roget to march on the Elys^e and to make 
a coup dMat or a pronunciamiento. Now we know 
that it was General Florentin who saved the Republic 
on that occasion, and enabled the estimable M. Loubet 
to enter upon and to complete his seven years' tenure 
of office as President of the Republic. 

General Andr^ is the sixth notable French military 
man whose career I have had to watch. I have 
never had to see him, however, on business, as I had 
formerly to see MacMahon, Galliffet, Boulanger, 
Billot, Zurlinden, and Thibaudin. General Picquart 
I have only seen twice — once, as I have said, at the 
trial of Zola for the letter ''/'accuse,'' and once in a 
caf6 frequented by artists, literary men, and actors. 
He is now a coming man, and we have to watch what 
the future has in store for him — whether, as some 
predicted when he entered the Cabinet, he will be 
spoiled by politics, or whether he can be relied upon by 
his country in the day of, let us hope, distant danger. 

And now I must conclude these notes and recol- 
lections of the long years spent by me in Paris. 
I have left many interesting events untouched, and 
have omitted many important names, but I have 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 375 

laboured to keep within the limits of my own 
experiences, such as they were. I have had very 
little to do with artists, and hence I have had little 
to say about their great world. Most of the artists 
whom I have known are the caricaturists, such as 
Caran d'Ache, Steinlen, Willette. 

I would also have wished to say more about the 
stage and the players of Paris, but that is another 
great department with which I was only occasionally 
in touch. 

Neither have I said much about Paris in its 
social and every-day aspects. That has been rather 
overdone of late years ; and everybody in England, 
and it may be said in America as well, is now 
familiar with modern Paris, thanks to the newspapers 
and the reviews. As to French characteristics, I have 
not attempted to give any, for the reason that greater 
writers have been endeavouring to fix them from the 
days of Tacitus and Csesar to our own. 

I bade farewell to Paris towards the end of 1906. 
I was sorry to depart without having been able or 
astute enough to fathom its deep mysteries, which range 
from the time of the " man in the iron mask " to the 
days of Napoleon the Third, Gambetta, Boulanger 
and Madame de Bonnemain, Baron Jacques de 
Reinach, Dr. Cornelius Herz, Felix Faure, 
Alfred Dreyfus, Emile Zola, Colonel Henry, Pere 
du Lac the Jesuit, Casimir Perier, and Gabriel 
Syveton. With each of these persons a mystery 
is linked, and it will be long before the world can 
know if Napoleon the Third belonged to the 
Bonaparte family or not ; how Gambetta came by his 
death ; if Madame de Bonnemain acted as a spy on 
General Boulanger ; why M. Casimir Perier resigned 



376 FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 

six months after his election; if P^re du Lac had 
Captain Dreyfus convicted ; and so on. I should 
also have wished to know, ere leaving, why the 
Pope and the Vatican are saddled with all the sins 
of Israel ; and if it be really the case that M. Emile 
Combes, M. Georges Clemenceau, and M. Aristide 
Briand are the most generous, accommodating, and 
disinterested friends that the Church of Rome has 
ever had in France. 

The Third Republic has been a regime of mystery 
and mystification ; and those painstaking people the 
historians of the future will have a tough task in 
dealing with it. 

In bidding farewell to Paris I lost many friends. 
Some of the French among them said " Vous 
reviendrez" but they are wrong. I shall ever 
remember it as a marvellous city where life is well 
worth living for four or five months every year, just 
to improve one's mind in an unrivalled intellectual 
and artistic atmosphere. 

If there were any reason why I should regret 
leaving so interesting a place, it would be found in 
the severance of the old ties binding me to former 
friends and colleagues of the English and American 
Press established in Paris. These, among whom 
I may mention G. A. Raper, T. F. Farman, Victor 
Collins, J. W. Ozanne, Laurence Jerrold, Morton 
Fullerton, J. N. Raphael, A. O'Neill, marked their 
good-fellowship by organising a farewell banquet for 
me, and by presenting me with a souvenir. This 
is a purely personal matter ; but I trust that a slight 
record of it will not be deemed out of place here, 
especially as it forms one of my most agreeable 
memories of Paris. 



Index 



About, Edmond, 22, 23 

Acland, 215 

Adam, Madame, 214, 284 

Aden, 315 

Aguetant, Marie, 98 

Alboni, Madame, 191 

Alfonso the Thirteenth, 272, 285 

Alvarez, 183 

Americans in Paris, 137, 138, 139, 

141, 142, 143, 145, 146 
Anarchists, 156, 177, 251 
Antoine, 117, 346, 347 
Andre, General, 363, 370, 371, 372, 

373. 374 
Andrieu, 165 
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 259 
Arago, 39 

Arnaud, General Saint, 9, 87 
Arnim, Count, 34 
Arnold, Sir E., 43, 126 
Arthur, 223 
Arton, 166 

" Athees, Dictionnaire des," 32 
Auber, 24 

Augier, E., 23, 285, 286, 347 
Aumale, Due d', 88, 188, 189 
Auteuil, 239 
Autun, 32 
" Avaries, les," 349 
Avellan, Admiral,^ 173 



Baden-Baden, 3 

Baihaut, 166 

Balfour, Mr., 225 

Balfour, Lady Betty, 129 

Ballet, Pots de Vin, 166 

Baratier, 229, 230 

Barclay, 171 

Barker, E. H., 47 

Barnard, 135 

Barbizon School, 25 

Barrera, Admiral, 133 

Barres, Maurice, 179, 196, 328, 335, 

336 
Baudelaire, 359 
Bauer, Monsignor, 203 
Bauer, Baron, 173 
Bauer, H., 213 
Bazaine, 28 
Beaulieu, 142 
Bebel, 33, 36 
Beckmann, 118, 161 
Becque, H., 347, 353 
Bellanger, Marguerite, 189 
Benedetti, 248 
Bennett, Mr. J. G., 44, 45, 46, 142, 

143, 144, 145, 146 
Beranger, 25 
Berlin, 102 

Bernhardt, Madame S., 96, 213 
Bertie, Sir F., 123 



377 



378 



FORTY YEARS OP PARIS 



Biarritz, 6 

Bignon's, 89 

Bingham, 136 

Bismarck, Prince, 11, 33, 34, 35, 

36, 37, 52, 56, 109, 118 
Blanqui, 73 
Bloc, 148, 293 
Blouet, 21 
Blount, Sir E., 136 
Blowitz, M. de, 52, 53, 54, 55, 58, 

86, 116, 127, 129, 167, 264, 265 
Boieldieu, 24 

Boisdeffre, General de, 221 
Bonanza king, 138 
Bonapartes, 6, 27, 34, 121, 122 
Bonnemain, Madame de, 88, 375 
Bonomelli, 326 
Borghese, Princess, 123 
Bossuet, 3, 341 
Bouillabaisse, 49 
Boulanger, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85,86, 

87, 88, 89, 90, 94, 95, 119, 122, 130 
Boulger, Demetrius, 170 
Bourbons, 121, 122 
Bourget, Paul, 223 ,335, 341, 342 
Booth-Clibborn, 228 
Boswell, A French, 89 
Bourse, 156 

Bovet, Madame de, 284 
Bowes, Hely, 48, 86 
Brabant, Genevieve de, 25 
Brandes, Mademoiselle, 127, 201 
Brandes, Otto, 167 
Brest, 132 
Briand, 292, 302 
Brieux, 286, 347, 348, 349 
Bright, 209 
Brisson, A., 91, 92 
Brisson, H., 80, 227, 229 
Broglie, 28, 79, 80 
Brookfield, Mrs., 48 
Brousse, 272 
Browne, 136 

Brugere, General, 372, 373 
Bryce, 169 
Brunetiere, 284, 297, 311, 341, 342, 

343 



Brussels, 88, 89 

Bulot, 157 

Buloz, 341 

Burdeau, 190 

Burgoyne, 46 

Burnham, Lord, 52, 89, 216, 267 

Buffet, 79 

Burt, Mr,, 72 



Caird, Mrs. M., 102, 105, 107, 108 

Canivet, 194 

Canossa, 302 

Caponi, 184 

Carew, 126 

Carnot, 33, loi, 180, 181, 182, 183, 

187, 235, 372 
Casimir-Perier, 33, 102, 181, 182, 

184, 185, 186, 187, 375 
Cassagnac, 55 

Castellane, 139, 140, 141, 142, 184 
Castres, 32 
Cavaignac, 227 
Ceard, 103 
Cellini, 2 

Cernuschi, 207, 208 
Cesti, 202 
Chabrol, 246, 247 
Challemel-Lacour, 39 
Chamberlain, 44, 225 
Charenton, 86 
Charpentier, 94 
Chicago, 319, 320 
Child, Theodore, 45 
ChinchoUe, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92,93, 94 
Christology, 315 
Church and State, 286, 287, 288, 

289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295, 

296, 297, 298, 299 
Claretie, J., 138 
Clarke, Campbell, 42, 44, 45, 50, 

52, 53> 57, 60, 86, 148, 259 
Clemenceau, 58, 59, 69, 71, 72, 73,, 

74; 75. 76, 77> 82, loi, 148, 158 

163, 164, 165, 367 
Clive, 126 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 



379 



Clotilde, Princess, 150, 151 

Cluny, 232 

Cobden, Richard, 209 

Collins, v., 376 

Collins, Wilkie, 48 

Colonna, 138 

Combes, 80, iii, 225, 253, 257, 
258, 259, 269, 272, 273, 281, 282, 
291, 295, 296, 298, 299, 300, 301, 
302, 376 

Comedie Fran^aise, 148, 201, 354 

Comedie Rosse, 347 

Compiegne, 2, 8, 251, 252 

Constans, 88, 152, 154, 155 

Conway, 147 

Cooke, Rev. O., 137 

Coppee, F., 179 

Coquelin, 144, 145, 355 

Courteline, 350, 351 

Cowley, Lord, 123 

Cramer, 192, 193 

Crawford, Mrs. E., 72 

Cremer, Mr., 72 

Cremieu-Foa, 160 

Cubat, 36 

Currie, 133 

Curzon, Hon. G. N., 170 

D 

Damala, 96 

Darmesteter, 337, 338, 339, 340, 

341 
Darwin, 349 
Davis, 61 

Daudet, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 368 
Deibler, 99 

Delaunay, 275, 276, 277 
Delcasse, 257, 270 
Delibes, 262 
Delilahs, 173 
Demange, 217, 218, 367 
Deroulede, 100, 163, 164, 165, 238, 

239. 285, 286 
Dicey, Mr., 52, 88 
Dijon, Bishop of, 305 
Dillon, Dr., 210, 212, 239 
Dillon, Count, 95 



Dollinger, Dr. von, 307, 315 

Donnay, 347, 348, 354 

Donnersmarck, Count von, 35 

Doumer, 366 

Doumic, 284 

Drumont, 159, 160, 161, 179 

Dreyfus, 160, 161,205,216,217,218, 

219, 220, 221, 226, 227, 228, 229, 

233, 234, 243, 244, 24s, 246, 367, 

368, 369, 370, 376. 
Dryad, 2 
Dufaure, 80 
Dufferin, Lord, 123, 128, 131, 132, 

207 
Du Lac, 376 
Dumas, 4, 105, 106, 107, 200, 201, 

347 
Dupanloup, 17 
Dupuis, 3 
Dupuy, 80 
Duquet, 29 
Duran, Carolus, 149 
Dynamiters, 158 

E 

Egyptian Question, 51, 52 

Elvire, 359 

Embassy, British, 123, 124, 125, 126, 

127, 128 
" Emperor Ernest," 80, 81 
Emperor William, 368 
Empire, Second, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 
Empress Augusta, 37 
Empress Eugenie, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 
Empress Frederick, 149, 150 
Esprit, Juif 1', 339 
Evans, Dr. de Lacy, 67 



Faliero, Marino, 166 

Falkland, Lord, 22 

Fallieres, President, 70, 80, 153, 364, 

365, 366 
Farman, T. F., 86, 264, 376 
Fashoda, 229, 230, 231 
Faure, President, 194, 233, 234, 235, 

236, 237, 238, 375 



380 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 



Faure, Sebastian, 234 

Favre, 34 

Fenians, 61 

Ferry, Jules, 38, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 

80, 87, 174, 298 
Flaubert, 14 
Fleet Street, 214, 215 
Floquet, 40, 76, 80, no, iii, 163, 

252 
Flourens, 84 
Fontaine, 119 
Fouquier, 263 
France, Anatole, 263, 329, 330, 331, 

332 
Franklin, 137 

French and Boers, 237, 238 
French and Italians, 183 
French dramatists, 346, 347, 348, 

349- 350. 35i> 353 
French literary men, 328, 329, 330, 

331, 332, 333, 334, 335, 33^, 337, 
338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343 
French Poets, 357, 358, 359, 360 
Freycinet, M. de, 80, 82, 84, 154 
Fullerton, M., 376 



Galignani, 46, 47, 48, 49, 146 

Gallay, 283 

Gallicanism, 296, 305 

Galliffet, Marquis de, 240, 242, 

243, 244, 369, 370, 374 
Gambetta, 23, 35, 36, 38, 80, 297, 

365, 375 
Gamelle, 120 
Gautier, 65, 333 
Gayraud, 311 
Genouilly, Admiral de, 12 
Gerome, 279 
Girardin, 263 
Gladstone, 68, 225 
Goblet, 82, 84, III 
Gohier, 71, 72, 253,254, 255, 256, 

257 
Goncourts, 223 
Gonne, 140 



Gosselin, 126, 133 

Got, 277 

Gondinet, 346, 347 

Gould, 139, 140, 141 

Gounod, 172, 173, 174 

Goutant-Biron, 37 

Gouthe-Soulard, 153 

Grande Chartreuse, 266 

Granville, 123 

Greaves, Mackenzie, 136 

Greely, 135 

Grevy, 38, 39, 41, 42, 77, 78, 79, 

83, 98, 100, lOI 
Gribayedoff, 147 
Guardian, the, 293 
Guerin, 247 
Guizot, 18 

H 

Hadamard, 217, 367 

Haeckel, 289 

Halevy, 3, 23, 107, 347 

Harduin, 264 

Hardy, Cozens- H., 266 

Harlot of Seven Hills, 294 

Harnack, 310, 313, 316, 318 

Harry, Myriam, 333 

Haussmann, 39 

Hebrevs^s, 159 

Heine, 355 

Henry, Colonel, 227 

Henry, Emile, 171 

Herbert, 136 

Herisson, Count d', 34 

Hermant, A., 207 

Herold, 24 

Herrmann, Dr., 327 

Hervieu, Paul, 285, 351, 352 

Herz, 164, 165 

Hildebrand, 288 

Hohenlohe, 37, 53, 56, 109, no, in 

HohenzoUerns, 12 

HoUingshead, John, 276 

Hornby, Dr., 215 

Houtin, Abbe, 313, 314, 315, 327 

Howells, 278 

Hiigel, Baron von, 314 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 



381 



Hugo, Victor, i8, 66, 67, 365 367 

Hugues, 61, 63 

Humbert, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257 

Huxley, 290 

Huysmans, 103, 329, 332, 333, 334 



Israel, Prophets of, 338 

J 

Jacques, 87 

James, Henry, 51 

Jaures, 36, 71, 171, 256, 257, 271, 272 

Jeancourt, 46 

Jerrold, L., 376 

Jessel, 217 

Jones, Longueville, 48 

Judet, 261 

Judic, Madame, 280 

^uive, la belle, 234 

Justice, La, 70, 71, 72, 73 

K 

Kane, 221 

Kant, 319, 326 

King Edward in Paris, 269, 270, 

271, 272 
Kingston, W. B.-, 114, 115, 116 
Kipling, 225 
Kitchener, Lord, 229 
Kock, Paul de, 19 
Kruger, 247, 267 



Labiche, 24 

Lacordaire, 3 

Lamartine, 357, 358 

Lanessan, M. de, 194 

Lanterne, la, 13 

Latin Quarter, 16, 17, 23, 26, 170 

Laur, 154 

Lavedan, H,, 284,286 

Lavino, W., 52, 53 

Law of Liquidation, 51 

Lawson, Hon. H., 266 

Lazare, B., 220 

Le Bargy, 201, 348 



Lebaudy, Max, 174, 175, 202, 203, 

204 
Ledrain, 311 

Lee, Sir, H. A., 128, 133, 169 
Lemaitre, J., 284, 330, 335, 336, 

337 
Leo the Thirteenth, 272, 273, 274, 

312 
Le Sage, John M., 57, 114 
Lesseps, 190, 241 
Liddon, 305 
Limousin, 77 
Loisy, Abbe, 304-327 
Longhurst, 47 
Lorenzelli, 310 
Lorrain, Jean, 176 
Loti, Pierre, 344, 345 
Loubet, President, 163, 237, 238, 

239. 271, 274, 296, 299, 363, 364 
Louis the Eighteenth, 30 
Louis Philippe, 102, 123, 136 
Loyson, 4, 305, 306, 307 
Lynch, 245 

Lyons, Lord, 123, 124, 125, 171 
Lytton, Earl, 123, 126, 127, 128, 

129, 130, 131 

M 

Macdonald, Sir H., 265 

Mackay, 138 

MacMahon, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 

33, 124, 172, 173 
Maignen, 310 
Marchand, 231 
Maret, 264 
Marinoni, 279, 280 
Marsy, 202 
Martin, H., 18 
Massard, 245 
Massillon, 3 
Massingham, Mr., 294 
Mathilde, Princess, 278 
Maumus, 242 
Maupas, M. de, 9 
Maupassant, Guy de, 14 
Mauri, Rosita, 166 



382 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 



Max Nordau, 354 

Medan, 104 

Meignan, Cardinal, 288, 299 

Meilhac, 3, 23, 209 

Meissonnier, 25, 138 

Meline, 80, 205, 299 

Mendes, C, 223 

Mercier, General 368 

Meredith, G., 91 

Merimee, 2, 7, 18 

Merivale, H. C, 42, 45, 276 

Merode, Cleo de, 206, 207 

Merry del Val, Cardinal, 302 

Metternich, 2, 6, 7, 8, 24 

Meyer, A., 13 

Meyer, Captain, 160, 161 

Michelet, 18 

Middleton, L., 147 

Mignet, 18 

Mignot, Archbishop, 320, 321 

Millage, 45, 49, 277, 278 

Millerand, 186 

Millevoye, 168, 169 

Mirbeau, 334, 335 

Mitchell, R., 2, 3 

Mohrenheim, 167 

Monod, 312 

Monson, Sir E., 123, 132, 134 

Montagnini, 287 

Montalembert, 3 

Monte Carlo, 227 

Montmartre, 169, 346 

Morny, Due de, 9 

Morton, Levi, 42 

Mounet, Sully, 91 

Mun, Count de, 172 

Muret, 339 

Murray, Grenville, 33, 136 

N 

Napoleon, Prince Jerome, 150, 151 
Napoleon, Prince Pierre, 13 
Neale's, 146 
Negrau, 116, 117, 118 
Newman, Cardinal, 315, 316 
Noir, v., 13 



Nolhac, P. de, 308, 329 
Normanby, Marquis of, 123 
Normandy, 14 
Norton, 168, 169 
Notre Dame, 238 

O 

O'Connor, T. P., 145 

Offenbach, 3 

Ohnet, Georges, 107, 335, 354 

Olier, 16 

Olliffe, 136 

OUivier, E., 10, 11, 12, 13, 357, 

358 
O'Mahoney (Prout), 146 
O'Neill, 376 
Opera, 184, 185, 191 
Opera Comique, 95, 96 
Orleans, Due d', 120, 121 
O'Sullivan, 32 
Otero, 176 
Ozanne, J. W., 45, 56, 57, 58, 60, 

89, 170, 233, 376 



Pailleron, 347 

Paiva, Madame de, 35, 36 

Panama, 162, 163, 164, 165, i66, 

167 
Panizzardi, 218 
" Paris, ses organes," &c., 7 
Parnell, 68, 69 
Pascal, 17 
Pasteur, 67, 68, 69 
Pater, W., 18 / 

Patrie Frangaise, 283 '^ 
Pelletan, C, 70, 225, 257, 291, 302 
Perraud, Cardinal, 311 
Persigny, 6, 89 
Pichon, 367 
Picquart, 367, 369, 370 
Pinero, 334 

Pius X., 273, 288, 291, 297 
Ponchon, 92, 361, 362 
Porter, General Horace, 134 
Pougy, Madame de, 174, 175, 176, 

189 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 



383 



Poussin, 25 

Pranzini, 98 

Prim, General, 83 

Prussia, 11 

Prussian deserter, 15, 16 

Pulitzer, Mr. J., 146 



Quiberon, 245 



Q 



R 



Rabagas, 23 

Rabelais, 332 

Raffaelli, 284 

Ranc, 302 

Raper, G. A., 376 

Raphael, J. N., 376 

Rashi, 339 

Ravachol, 155, 156 

Reinach, 161, 162, 163, 220, 243, 

370. 375 
Rejane, 201 
Renan, 16, 17, 21, 108, 303, 306, 

310, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 330, 

331 
Rennes, 245 

Republic and Empire, 10, 1 1 

Reyer, 239 

Ribot, 80 

Richard, Cardinal, 310 

Riley, 145 

Ritschl, 327 

Roche, 152 

Rochefort, Henri, 13, 38, 39, 40, 

87- 95, i95> 196, 197, 240. 
Rochefoucauld, Due de, 70 
Rodays, M. de, 139 
Rodenbach, 360 
Rome, 5, 25, 293, 325, 327 
Rosenthal, 202, 203, 204 
Rossetti, 360 
Rostand, E., 355, 356 
Rothschilds, 141, 190 
Roubion's, 49 
Rouher, 4, 5 
Rousseau, J. J., 296 



Rouvier, 80, 84, 163, 164, 366 
Russian fever, 153 



Sabatier, 323, 326, 327 

Sadowa, 4 

Sagan, Princess d', 157 

Sainte-Beuve, 4 

Saint-Saens, 19 

Sala, G. A., 36, 146 

Salisbury, Lord, 75, 275 

Sandor, Pauline von, 8 

Santos, Dumont, 74 

Sarcey, 22, 66 

Sardou, 23, 105, 106, 148, 346, 347 

Sarrien, 80, 82 

Sarto, Cardinal, 292 

Saussier, 372 

Scheurer-Kestner, 220 

Schneider, Hortense, 2, 3 

Scholl, 183, 184 

Schwartzkoppen, von, 48 

Scott, Clement, 114 

Scribe, 286 

Severine, 197 

Sewell & Maugham, Messrs., 46 

Shee, d' Alton, 233 

Siam, 170 

Simon, Jules, 208 

Smith, Robertson, 314 

Spinoza, 339, 340 

SpuUer, 2og 

Stael, Madame de, 172 

Standard, the, 48, 232, 264 

Stanley, 146 

Stead, W. T. 115,212 

Steinhuber, Cardinal, 327 

Steinlen, 325 

Stendhal, 262 

Stuart, 123 

Sulpice, Saint, 16, 25 

Syveton, 260, 283, 284, 285 



Tailhade, 177, 178, 179, 180 
Taine, H, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 174, 
336 



384 



FORTY YEARS OF PARIS 



Talleyrand, 141 

Talmudic triumph, 368 

Taxile-Delord, 13 

Telegraph, Daily, 42, 43, 45, 50, 51, 

52, 55. 56, 57, 59, 67, 89, 95, 98, 

102, 104, 139, 214, 216, 217, 233, 

267 
Temps, le, 166, 274, 367 
Tennyson and Lamartine, 358 
Thackeray, 48, 49 
Thermidor, 148 
Thiers, 27, 79 
Third Republic, 10, 33, 41 
" Three Musketeers," 4 
Thureau-Dangin, 11, 313 
Thomas, Ambroise, 174, 205 
Times, the, 53, 54, 55, 127, 337 
Tonkin, 58 
Torri, 207 
Tortoni's, 263 
Trarieux, 220 
Trianon, imitation, 139 
Trinitarian, 130 
Triplice, 296 
Trochu, 235 
Troppmann, 98 
Tsar, 209, 210, 211, 237, 250, 251, 

252 
Tuileries, 2, 12 



U 



Ulm, Rue d', 69 
Ushant, 134 

V 

Vandam, 161 
Vacquerie, 65, 66 



Vatican, 5, iii, 287, 289, 295 

Verdi, 182, 183 

Verite Franfaise, la, 319 

Verlaine, 360, 361 

Vernet, 25 

Versailles, 100, 237, 329 

Veuillot, 3, 306 

Victoria, Queen, 9, 127 

Victor Emmanuel, 271 

Villon, 360 

Vitu, 171 

Viviani, 289, 290, 291, 293 

Vladimir, Grand Duke, 210 

Voltaire, 257, 289, 296 

W 

Waldeck- Rousseau, 80, 239, 240, 
241, 242, 243, 244, 247, 249, 
251, 252, 254, 255, 273, 274, 281, 
301 

Wallace, Sir R., 136 

Waddington, 187 

Warre, Dr., 215 

Wellington, Duke of, 123 

Whitehead, Sir J., 115 

Wliitehurst, 136 

Wilson, D., 39, 40, 41, 42, 77 

Wolff, A., 86 

Worth, 197, 198, 199, 200 



Zandt, Mademoiselle Van, 97, 98 
Zola, 102, 103, 104, 105, 226, 227, 

254, 260, 261, 262, 263, 367, 375 
Zurlinden, General, 228, 374 



UNWIN BKOTHEES, LIMITED, THE GBESHAM PBEBB, WOKING AND LONDON. 



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